A 2.2 micrometer imaging survey of the Orion a molecular cloud

Details A 2.2 micrometer imaging survey of the Orion a molecular cloud A 2.2 micrometer imaging survey of the Orion a molecular cloud

Feb 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995aj....109..709a&link_type=abstract

Astronomical Journal (ISSN 0004-6256), vol. 109, no. 2, p. 709-720

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

60

Infrared Astronomy, Infrared Imagery, Luminosity, Molecular Clouds, Orion Constellation, Functions (Mathematics), Near Infrared Radiation, Statistical Analysis

Scientific paper

We present results from a 2.2 micrometer (Klimiting approx. equals 14.5 mag) survey of the northern portion of the Orion A molecular cloud. A total of 3548 sources were detected in the 1472 sq arcmin area surveyed. We detect clustering of 2.2 micrometer sources at the locations of the Trapezium and OMC-2. No strict boundaries for these clusters could be drawn from our data because we find that the entire region surveyed shows an overabundance of sources when compared with background field levels. We find that the form of the observed K luminosity function (KLF) of stars near the Trapezium is consistent with that predicted from a Miller & Scalo (1979) initial mass function (IMF), if the age of the cluster is approximately 106 yr. Away from the Trapezium and the OMC-2, the KLF of stars suggests that either this population contains more low mass stars or that it is older than the Trapezium stars. We have investigated how KLFs evolve with the age of a cluster, extinction, and excess emission from young stars by modeling KLFs of hypothetical clusters. Our results suggest that best fit slopes to the cumulative KLF provide a very crude method for characterizing KLFs, that aage produces significant changes in the KLFs, and that turnovers in the observed KLF of young clusters do not conclusively demonstrate a 'missing' low mass population.

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