Dense cores in Gould Belt clouds

We develop a new method to discriminate submillimeter cores found by Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) as starless or protostellar, using point source photometry from Spitzer wide field surveys. First, we identify infrared sources with red colors associated with embedded young stellar objects (YSOs).

Second, we compare the positions of these YSO candidates to our submillimeter cores. With these identifications, we construct new, self-consistent starless and protostellar core mass functions (CMFs) for the five clouds. We find best-fit slopes to the high-mass end of the CMFs of -1.26+/-0.20, -1.22+/-0.06, -0.95+/-0.20, and -1.67+/-0.72 for Ophiuchus, Taurus, Perseus, and Orion, respectively.