Speaker
Roxana Chira
(ESO)
Description
Dust emission surveys at sub-mm and far-infrared wavelengths, e. g. by Herschel, provide new possibilities to study star formation in filamentary molecular clouds. The column density and temperature profiles that are derived with these observations rely on models that describe dust particles in a time-constant environment. Thereby, it is assumed that all the dust is visible for the observer. However, up to today, it is not established how the ability of observing dust depends on the surrounding radiation fields.
We apply our three-dimensional dust radiative transfer code to model externally heated clumpy filaments. We predict the intensity and temperature distributions by varying the strengths of the external heating field and the dust composition. The model results are confronted with observations.