"Starless" Super-Jeans Cores in Four Gould Belt Clouds

TL;DR

This study analyzes 17 super-Jeans cores in four Gould Belt clouds, reclassifies their starless or protostellar status, and highlights three genuine starless cores as prime targets for future research on star formation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed re-evaluation of super-Jeans cores using combined JCMT/SCUBA and Spitzer data, identifying genuine starless cores for further study.

Findings

3 cores are confirmed starless

11 cores have ambiguous classifications

3 cores are reclassified as protostellar

Abstract

From a survey of 729 cores based on JCMT/SCUBA data, we present an analysis of 17 candidate starless cores with masses that exceed their stable Jeans masses. We re-examine the classification of these super-Jeans cores using Spitzer maps and find that 3 are re-classified as protostellar, 11 have ambiguous emission near the core positions, and 3 appear to be genuinely starless. We suggest the 3 starless and 11 undetermined super-Jeans cores represent excellent targets for future observational and computational study to understand the evolution of dense cores and the process of star formation.