Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 1992
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992aas...18110307s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, 181st AAS Meeting, #103.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, p.1288
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We report the results of an extensive near-infrared imaging survey of L1641. Our survey, which covers 0.77 deg(2) (49 pc(2) ) reaches 5sigma limits at J, H and K of 16.8, 15.8, 14.7 mag, reveals 1) a population of ~ 1500 stars spread throughout the cloud (the distributed population); 2) 7 small aggregates, each comprised of 10-50 stars; and 3) a heretofore uncatalogued, partially embedded dense cluster comprised of ~ 150 stars. In all cases, the stellar populations are dominated by solar-type PMS stars which appear to contain a mix of objects analogous to weak-line and classical T-Tauri stars. Analysis of (J-H), (H-K) colors for the stars in our sample, as well as (R-I) colors for stars suffering only modest extinction, suggests that the 7 aggregates contain a significantly higher proportion of stars ( ~ 60 %) surrounded by circumstellar accretion disks than do the cluster ( ~ 40%) or the distributed populations ( ~ 30%). The evolutionary state of these populations is evaluated from analysis of reddening-corrected J-band luminosity functions. These observed luminosity functions are compared with models calculated by assuming 1) a Scalo initial mass function, and 2) all stars are born simultaneously. The aggregates appear to have ages of ~ 1 Myr, while the mean age of the distributed and cluster populations is estimated to be ~ 5 Myr. The distributed population also appears to contain some stars with ages as great as ~ 10 Myr. The fact that more than 65% of the stars in our sample belong to the distributed population suggests that most stars in L1641 form either 1) in isolation, via the collapse of individual protostellar cores, or 2) in unbound stellar aggregates, whose members disperse to join the distributed population on timescales of a few million years. The observed decrease in accretion disk frequency with increasing mean age is consistent with the hypothesis that most if not all solar-type stars are initially surrounded by disks, and that those disks evolve on timescales on the order of several million years.
Merrill Michael K.
Strom Karen M.
Strom Stephen E.
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