TY - JOUR
T1 - The "C": The large Chameleon-Musca-Coalsack cloud
AU - Edenhofer, Gordian
AU - Alves, João
AU - Zucker, Catherine
AU - Posch, Laura
AU - Enßlin, Torsten A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Authors 2024.
PY - 2024/7/1
Y1 - 2024/7/1
N2 - Recent advancements in 3D dust mapping have transformed our understanding of the Milky Way’s local interstellar medium, enabling us to explore its structure in three spatial dimensions for the first time. In this Letter, we use the most recent 3D dust map by Edenhofer et al. to study the well-known Chameleon, Musca, and Coalsack cloud complexes, located about 200 pc from the Sun. We find that these three complexes are not isolated but rather connect to form a surprisingly well-defined half-ring, constituting a single C-shaped cloud with a radius of about 50 pc, a thickness of about 45 pc, and a total mass of about 5 × 104 M⊙, or 9 × 104 M⊙ if including everything in the vicinity of the C-shaped cloud. Despite the absence of an evident feedback source at its center, the dynamics of young stellar clusters associated with the C structure suggest that a single supernova explosion about 4 Myr–10 Myr ago likely shaped this structure. Our findings support a single origin story for these cloud complexes, suggesting that they were formed by feedback-driven gas compression, and offer new insights into the processes that govern the birth of star-forming clouds in feedback-dominated regions, such as the Scorpius-Centaurus association.
AB - Recent advancements in 3D dust mapping have transformed our understanding of the Milky Way’s local interstellar medium, enabling us to explore its structure in three spatial dimensions for the first time. In this Letter, we use the most recent 3D dust map by Edenhofer et al. to study the well-known Chameleon, Musca, and Coalsack cloud complexes, located about 200 pc from the Sun. We find that these three complexes are not isolated but rather connect to form a surprisingly well-defined half-ring, constituting a single C-shaped cloud with a radius of about 50 pc, a thickness of about 45 pc, and a total mass of about 5 × 104 M⊙, or 9 × 104 M⊙ if including everything in the vicinity of the C-shaped cloud. Despite the absence of an evident feedback source at its center, the dynamics of young stellar clusters associated with the C structure suggest that a single supernova explosion about 4 Myr–10 Myr ago likely shaped this structure. Our findings support a single origin story for these cloud complexes, suggesting that they were formed by feedback-driven gas compression, and offer new insights into the processes that govern the birth of star-forming clouds in feedback-dominated regions, such as the Scorpius-Centaurus association.
KW - Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
KW - Dust
KW - Extinction
KW - ISM: individual objects: Chameleon
KW - ISM: individual objects: Musca
KW - ISM: clouds
KW - ISM: individual objects: Coalsack
KW - ISM: structure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85198110235&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/202450374
DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202450374
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-6361
VL - 687
JO - Astronomy & Astrophysics
JF - Astronomy & Astrophysics
M1 - L9
ER -