NGC 2264 clumps column densities

Despite the abundance of studies of mass segregation for stellar clusters, those for stellar progenitors are still scarce, so the question on the origin and evolution of mass segregation is still open. Our goal is to characterize the structure of the NGC 2264 molecular cloud and compare the populations of clumps and young stellar objects (YSOs) in this region whose rich YSO population has shown evidence of sequential star formation.

We separated the Herschel column density map of NGC 2264 in three subregions and compared their cloud power spectra using a multiscale segmentation technique. We identified in the whole NGC 2264 cloud a population of 256 clumps with typical sizes of ~0.1pc and masses ranging from 0.08M_{sun}_ to 53M_{sun}_. Although clumps have been detected all over the cloud, the central subregion of NGC 2264 concentrates most of the massive, bound clumps.