The BLAST Survey of the Vela Molecular Cloud: Dynamical Properties of
  the Dense Cores in Vela-D
  The Vela-D region, according to the nomenclature given by Murphy & May
(1991), of the star forming complex known as the Vela Molecular Ridge (VMR),
has been recently analyzed in details by Olmi et al. (2009), who studied the
physical properties of 141 pre- and proto-stellar cold dust cores, detected by
the ``Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope'' (BLAST) during a
much larger (55 sq. degree) Galactic Plane survey encompassing the whole VMR.
This survey's primary goal was to identify the coldest, dense dust cores
possibly associated with the earliest phases of star formation. In this work,
the dynamical state of the Vela-D cores is analyzed. Comparison to dynamical
masses of a sub-sample of the Vela-D cores estimated from the 13CO survey of
Elia et al. (2007), is complicated by the fact that the 13CO linewidths are
likely to trace the lower density intercore material, in addition to the dense
gas associated with the compact cores observed by BLAST. In fact, the total
internal pressure of these cores, if estimated using the 13CO linewidths,
appears to be higher than the cloud ambient pressure. If this were the case,
then self-gravity and surface pressure would be insufficient to bind these
cores and an additional source of external confinement (e.g., magnetic field
pressure) would be required. However, if one attempts to scale down the 13CO
linewidths, according to the observations of high-density tracers in a small
sample of sources, then most proto-stellar cores would result effectively
gravitationally bound.
