A large catalogue of molecular clouds in the southern sky

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalogue of 250 molecular clouds in the southern sky, with accurate distance estimates and physical properties, based on 3D dust extinction maps and stellar data.

Contribution

It introduces a large, detailed catalogue of southern sky molecular clouds with improved distance measurements and physical property estimations.

Findings

Identified 250 molecular clouds in the southern sky.

Estimated cloud distances with less than 7% uncertainty.

Provided physical properties like radius, mass, and surface density.

Abstract

We present a large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distance estimates in the southern sky. Based on the three-dimensional (3D) dust extinction map and the best-fit extinction and distance information of over 17 million stars presented in Guo et al., we have identified 250 dust/molecular clouds in the southern sky using a hierarchical structure identification algorithm. Amongst them, 71 clouds locating at high Galactic latitudes ($b < -10^\circ$). We have estimated the distances to the clouds by fitting the extinction versus distance profiles of the lines of sight overlapping with the clouds using a simple Gaussian dust distribution model. The typical uncertainties of the distances are less than 7 per$\,$cent. We also provide the physical properties of the individual clouds, including the linear radius, mass and surface mass density.