1995A&AS..111..483A

IRAS images at full resolution and four wavelengths (12, 25, 60 and 100µm) of a large region around the Taurus complex are presented, the light unrelated to the clouds removed with an uncertainty estimated to 0.1, 0.15, 0.3 and 0.8MJy/sr respectively. These images are basic tools for multiple analysis and comparisons with other data. The efficiency of the 100µm and CO (J=1-0) emissions to trace matter are then compared using the large scale (750 square degrees), regularly sampled and unbiased survey of the CO (J=1-0) emission of the Perseus, Taurus and Auriga region of Ungerechts & Thaddeus (1987) and a resolution degraded 100µm emission map. The major large scale features visible on the CO map are visible on the 100µm map, with a lower contrast because these features are surrounded with pixels containing 100µm emission but no detected CO emission. However the pixel to pixel correlation between the two emissions is poor, which illustrates the not common dependence of the local density structure on the CO and 100µm emissions. Anyway, this comparison shows that at least 70% of the matter associated with the complex traced by the 100µm emission is traced by the CO (J=0-1) emission observed with an angular resolution of 0.5deg and a sensitivity limit of 0.5Kkm/s.