1 research outputs found
Simulated observations of star formation regions: infrared evolution of globally collapsing clouds
The direct comparison between hydrodynamical simulations and observations is
needed to improve the physics included in the former and test biases in the
latter. Post-processing radiative transfer and synthetic observations are now
the standard way to do this. We report on the first application of the
\texttt{SKIRT} radiative transfer code to simulations of a star-forming cloud.
The synthetic observations are then analyzed following traditional
observational workflows. We find that in the early stages of the simulation,
stellar radiation is inefficient in heating dust to the temperatures observed
in Galactic clouds, thus the addition of an interstellar radiation field is
necessary. The spectral energy distribution of the cloud settles rather quickly
after Myr of evolution from the onset of star formation, but its
morphology continues to evolve for Myr due to the expansion of
\textsc{Hii} regions and the respective creation of cavities, filaments, and
ridges. Modeling synthetic \textit{Herschel} fluxes with 1- or 2-component
modified black bodies underestimates total dust masses by a factor of .
Spatially-resolved fitting recovers up to about of the intrinsic value.
This ``missing mass'' is located in a very cold dust component with
temperatures below K, which does not contribute appreciably to the
far-infrared flux. This effect could bias real observations if such dust exists
in large amounts. Finally, we tested observational calibrations of the SFR
based on infrared fluxes and concluded that they are in agreement when compared
to the intrinsic SFR of the simulation averaged over Myr