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Description
The filamentary structure of molecular clouds may set important constraints on the mass distribution of stars forming within them. It is therefore important to understand which physical mechanism dominates filamentary cloud fragmentation and core formation. Orion A is the nearest giant molecular cloud, and its so-called S-shaped filament is a very active star-forming region that is a good target for such a study. We have recently reported on the collapse and fragmentation properties of the northernmost part of this structure, located ~2.4pc north of Orion KL - Orion Molecular Cloud (OMC) 3. As part of our project to study the S-shaped filament, we analyze the fragmentation properties of the northern OMC 1 filament (located <~0.3pc north of Orion KL). This filament is a dense structure previously identified by JCMT/SCUBA submillimeter continuum and VLA NH_3_ observations and was shown to have fragmented into clumps. Our aim is to search for cores and young protostars embedded within OMC 1n and to study how the filament is fragmenting to form them. We observed OMC 1North (hereafter OMC 1n) with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) at 1.3mm and report on our analysis of the continuum data.
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