Dust temperature a), column density b), and volume density c) maps of B68 derived by the ray-tracing algorithm as described in Sect. 3.2. The maps showing the dust temperature and the volume density are the ones calculated for the mid-plane across the plane of the sky. The global temperature minimum coincides with the density peak and attains a value of 8 K. The central column density is N_H = 4.3 × 10²² cm^-2. The central particle density is n_H = 3.4 × 10⁵ cm^-3. The black solid circles represent the size of the BES fitted by Alves et al. (2001b). The major and the minor axes of the black dashed ellipses denote the FWHM of the 2D Gaussians fitted to temperature and density peaks (see text). We have plotted the three cuts through the maps as dashed lines, whose colours match the ones in the radial profile plots. The white crosses indicate the location of the point source we have identified and described in Sect. 4.2. The coordinates are given in arcminutes relative to the centre of the density distributions, i.e. RA , Dec = −23°49′50″.