A SCUBA survey of L1689 -: the dog that didn't bark

We present submillimetre data for the L1689 cloud in the rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex. We detect a number of starless and pre-stellar cores and protostellar envelopes. We also detect a number of filaments for the first time in the submillimetre continuum that are parallel both to each other, and to filaments observed in the neighbouring L1688 cloud. These filaments are also seen in the (CO)-C-13 observations of L1689. The filaments contain all of the star-formation activity in the cloud. L1689 lies next to the well-studied L1688 cloud that contains the rho Oph-A core. L1688 has a much more active star-formation history than L1689 despite their apparent similarity in (CO)-C-13 data. Hence, we label L1689 as the dog that didn't bark. We endeavour to explain this apparent anomaly by comparing the total mass of each cloud that is currently in the form of dense material such as pre-stellar cores. We note firstly that L1688 is more massive than L1689, but we also find that when normalized to the total mass of each cloud, the L1689 cloud has a much lower percentage of mass in dense cores than L1688. We attribute this to the hypothesis of Loren that the star formation in the rho Ophiuchi complex is being affected and probably dominated by the external influence of the nearby Upper Scorpius OB association and predominantly by sigma Sco. L1689 is further from sigma Sco and is therefore less active. The influence of sigma Sco appears none the less to have created the filaments that we observe in L1689.