By means of mapping observation with Delingha 13.7 m  telescope in three CO isotopes, researchers at the Purple mountain  observatory observe the North American and Pelican Nebulae to study the  properties of large scale cold molecular cloud. Three CO isotopes  present different spatial distributions and velocity features: 12CO is  bright and extended, associating with dust extinction; 13CO is compact;  C18O is only detected within a few dense clumps. The kinetic structures  of the cloud confirm an expanding shell surrounding the ionized gas  produced by the W80 HII region. Warm gas (>20 K) is found to outline  the edge of the HII region, while cold gas spreads across the whole  cloud. According to the spatial distributions, six discernable regions  are found in the cloud with different physical properties indicating  their different evolutionary stages.

We search for clump structures within the cold cloud and 611 valid  clumps are identified. The properties of these clumps are similar to the  cold clumps in early phase of star formation. Most clumps are  gravitationally bound. Young stellar objects have already formed in some  clumps.

The work by Shaobo Zhang, Ji Yang, and Ye Xu has been published on the Astronomical Journal available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014AJ....147...46Z 

 By with for ZHANG Shaobo

Figure 1. Composite color image of the North American and Pelican Nebulae complex made from the integrated intensity map, with 12CO in blue, 13CO in green, and C18O in red, respectively.         

 By with for ZHANG Shaobo

Figure 2. Clumps identified in the complex. The circles indicate the clump positions on the integrated intensity map of ¹³CO.  The colors of the circles represent the velocities the clumps, while  the circles are scaled according to the sizes of clumps.