Dense cores in interstellar molecular clouds

To date, observations have presented somewhat contradictory evidence relating to this issue. In this paper we propose to derive the mass function of a complete sample of dense molecular cores in a single cloud employing a robust method that uses uses extinction of background starlight to measure core masses and enables the reliable extension of such measurements to lower masses than previously possible.

We use a map of near-infrared extinction in the nearby Pipe dark cloud to identify the population of dense cores in the cloud and measure their masses.