Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
The Parkes radio telescope has been used to search a list of small, dense southern dark clouds and Bok globules for ammonia emission at 23.7 GHz. The ammonia observations, together with IRAS data and the cloud’s visual appearance, have been used to determine a short list of dark clouds for observation with the infrared imaging system (IRIS) on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, in an attempt to determine the dust density distribution within the clouds. Near-infrared images of a number of the short listed clouds have been obtained with IRIS at J, H and K’. Preliminary results are reported for this ammonia survey, together with IRIS images of the strong ammonia source DC 297.7–2.8. Coincident with the dense ammonia core of this object is an IRAS ‘core’ source, IRAS 11590–6452 and an extremely interesting near-infrared source, which lies on the edge of the error ellipse of the IRAS source.