Lomax, Oliver David ![]() ![]() |
Abstract
The extent to which the projected distribution of stars in a cluster is due to a large-scale radial gradient, and the extent to which it is due to fractal substructure, can be quantified – statistically – using the measure Graphic. Here Graphic is the normalized mean edge length of its minimum spanning tree (i.e. the shortest network of edges connecting all stars in the cluster) and Graphic is the correlation length (i.e. the normalized mean separation between all pairs of stars). We show how Graphic can be indirectly applied to grey-scale images by decomposing the image into a distribution of points from which Graphic and Graphic can be calculated. This provides a powerful technique for comparing the distribution of dense gas in a molecular cloud with the distribution of the stars that condense out of it. We illustrate the application of this technique by comparing Graphic values from simulated clouds and star clusters.
Item Type: | Article |
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Date Type: | Publication |
Status: | Published |
Schools: | Physics and Astronomy |
Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
ISSN: | 0035-8711 |
Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2023 16:09 |
URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/69590 |
Citation Data
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