Chandra observations of the massive star forming region, Cygnus OB2

Details Chandra observations of the massive star forming region, Cygnus OB2 Chandra observations of the massive star forming region, Cygnus OB2

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009cfdd.confe.212w&link_type=abstract

Chandra's First Decade of Discovery, Proceedings of the conference held 22-25 September, 2009 in Boston, MA. Edited by Scott Wo

Computer Science

Stars And Star Formation

Scientific paper

We present results from a Chandra study of the massive star forming region, Cygnus OB2. At a distance of 1.5kpc, Cygnus OB2 is the nearest massive star forming region, hosting thousands of OB stars and millions of low-mass stars. It is therefore an ideal location to study how the star formation process varies in such extreme environments. We combine Chandra X-ray observations with photometry from recent deep Galactic Plane surveys to study the stellar population down to sub-solar masses. We detect 1700 X-ray sources, the majority of which have optical or near-IR associations. Near-IR photometry is used to study the age and structure of the star forming region. Evidence for an older generation of star formation is presented, and we discuss this in terms of the history of the region. The fraction of sources with inner circumstellar disks is found to be small at only 5-10%, which is interpreted as due to both the influence of the large number of OB stars in the region and the presence of slightly older stars in the region. The initial mass function shows a Salpeter slope down to our completeness limit and provides no evidence for a flatter slope at high masses as has been suggested for massive star forming regions. The spatial distribution of sources shows a small amount of structure, suggesting the cluster is dynamically evolved and a two-point correlation function is used to estimate the age and velocity dispersion in the region. A fractured minimum spanning tree is used to provide evidence for mass segregation, which is considered in terms of the dynamical evolution of the region. Finally these results are discussed in terms of the age and star formation history of Cygnus OB2 and the implications for the wider evolution of the Cygnus X region.

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