Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21535503a&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #355.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.539
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Stars form in a wide range of environments, from dark clouds to dense clusters, but the influence of these environments on protostar properties is poorly characterized. We present a comparative study of protostars identified in Spitzer surveys of nine clouds within 1 kpc of the Sun - Taurus, Lupus, Chamaeleon, Ophiuchus, Perseus, Serpens, Orion, Cep OB3, Mon R2 (more than 800 protostars ranging in bolometric luminosity from a few tenths to a few hundred solar luminosities) - as well as two more distant regions - Maddalena's cloud and the Cygnus-X complex. This unprecedented sample spans a diverse range of environments from nearby dark clouds to massive stars formation complexes rich with O-stars. Using photometry from Spitzer's IRAC and MIPS instruments, as well as 2MASS coverage of the near-Infrared wavelengths, we construct the near to mid-IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and determine the SED slope and the near to mid-IR luminosity of each protostar. These values are then used to estimate the bolometric luminosities of the protostars. We compare the protostellar luminosity functions of the clouds. Our initial finding is that it is unlikely that the luminosity functions are drawn from the same parent distribution. We find that massive star forming regions show an excess of higher luminosity sources, although there are significant biases due to incompleteness at both the bright and faint ends of the luminosity functions. We further examine the dependence of the protostellar luminosity function on the density of neighboring YSOs.
Allen Lew
Allgaier E. E.
Cygnus Team X.
Gutermuth Robert
Megeath Thomas
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