Cold dust clumps in dynamically hot gas

Abstract

Aims. We present clumps of dust emission from Herschel observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and their physical and statistical properties. We catalog cloud features seen in the dust emission from Herschel observations of the LMC, the Magellanic type irregular galaxy closest to the Milky Way, and compare these features with H i catalogs from the ATCA+Parkes H i survey. Methods. Using an automated cloud-finding algorithm, we identify clouds and clumps of dust emission and examine the cumulative mass distribution of the detected dust clouds. The mass of cold dust is determined from physical parameters that we derive by performing spectral energy distribution fits to 250, 350, and 500 μm emission from SPIRE observations using dust grain size distributions for graphite/silicate in low-metallicity extragalactic environments. Results. The dust cloud mass spectrum follows a power law distribution with an exponent of γ = -1.8 for clumps larger than 4 × 102 M⊙ and is similar to the H i mass distribution. This is expected from the theory of ISM structure in the vicinity of star formation. © 2010 ESO.