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The evolution of molecular clouds and star formation is fundamentally affected by turbulence. However, methods for accurately measuring the turbulence of clouds, particularly molecular clouds which include systematic motion, are not well defined. Motivated by this, we aim to develop a method to recover the 3-dimensional turbulence of clouds from observable data. We simulate a rotating molecular cloud of radius 1 parsec and investigate its true turbulence and the turbulence which can be measured from observational data. We investigate the spatial mean of the second moment map and find it to be an overestimate of the true turbulence, to decrease at a faster rate than the 3-dimensional turbulence over time, and to have a non-constant correction factor when compared to the 3-dimensional turbulence. We also investigate the standard deviation of the gradient subtracted first moment map and find it to be an underestimate of the true turbulence, to increase at a faster rate than the 3-dimensional turbulence over time, and to have a non-constant correction factor when compared to the 3-dimensional turbulence. We then consider recovering the turbulence by combining the information encoded in the second moment map and the gradient subtracted first moment map. We take the average of the two statistics and find it to be a more appropriate turbulence quantifier, but suggest that further investigation be done. |
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