Tomography of the Ophiuchus Molecular Cloud with Velocity Features in C₂H <i>N</i> = 1–0 Spectra: A Pilot Study of Coherent Sub-structures

Abstract The C 2 H N = 1–0 transition was used to investigate the possible line of sight sub-structures from the dense and optically thick in 13 CO J = 1–0 regions in the Ophiuchus star-forming molecular cloud. With a 0.2 K or lower noise, multi-peak spectra were obtained and then used for identifying sub-structures. There are clues, e.g., the core velocity dispersion remains unchanged with the increasing scale that this cloud has a mild thickness in the line of sight direction and a large amount of overlapping CO cores, as expected, at least two coherent layers have been found. The integrated intensity maps of these two layers are different in shape and morphology. Inferred from the point velocity dispersion, one sub-structure with a thickness of ∼1 pc was found, while other substructures were more likely to be fragments.