Comparison of (effective) total column density PDFs of Snake based on data of this work (left) and Wang et al. (2015, right. The black lines show the original data of the simulation and observation, respectively. The grey-shaded area on the left plot indicates the range that would be below the detection limit of Herschel. The blue-dotted line in both images indicates the cut limit which is used for noise reduction. The solid blue line in the right plot shows the total column density PDF based on the masked intensity maps.