The kinetic temperature of Barnard 68

We have observed the nearby isolated globule Barnard 68 (B68) in the (J,K) = (1,1) and (2,2) inversion lines of ammonia. The gas kinetic temperature derived from these is T = 10 ± 1.2 K. The observed line-widths are almost thermal: ∆V = 0.181 ± 0.003 kms −1 (∆Vtherm = 0.164 ± 0.010 kms −1 ), supporting the earlier hypothesis that B68 is in hydrostatic equi- librium. The kinetic temperature is an input parameter to the physical cloud model put forward recently, and we discuss the impact of the new value in this context.