Understanding star formation in molecular clouds I. Effects of line-of-sight contamination on the column density structure

Understand

Column-density maps of molecular clouds are one of the most important observables in the context of molecular cloud- and star-formation (SF) studies.

• With the Herschel satellite it is now possible to determine the column density from dust emission.
• We use observations and simulations to demonstrate how LOS contamination affects the column density probability distribution function (PDF).
• We apply a first-order approximation (removing a constant level) to the molecular clouds of Auriga, Maddalena, Carina and NGC3603.