In Search of the Youngest Protostars: IRAS HIRES Results in the Serpens Cloud Core

Details In Search of the Youngest Protostars: IRAS HIRES Results in the Serpens Cloud Core In Search of the Youngest Protostars: IRAS HIRES Results in the Serpens Cloud Core

Dec 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995aas...187.6603h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 187th AAS Meeting, #66.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 27, p.1376

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Protostars which have yet to accrete the bulk of their initial main sequence mass from their infall envelopes, dubbed ``Class 0'' (Andre, Ward-Thompson, & Barsony 1993), represent the youngest (a few x 10(4) yr) protostellar sources. The defining observational characteristics for Class 0 protostars include a high ratio of mm/submm to bolometric luminosity, the presence of molecular outflows, invisibility shortward of 10 mu m, and spectral energy distributions (SEDs) resembling modified blackbodies with T <= 30 K. Since Class 0 SEDs peak at ~ 100--200 mu m, far-infrared (FIR) data are required to produce SEDs for these sources. The nearby Serpens star-forming cloud core is a region of great interest for Class 0 protostar searches. Millimeter continuum maps of the central 6(') x 5(') reveal at least five cold dust continuum peaks which lack NIR counterparts (Casali, Eiroa, & Duncan 1993). A recent multi-transition H_2CO study of these millimeter continuum sources (FIRS1, SMM2, SMM3, SMM4, & S68N) confirms the presence of central heating sources and substantial masses of circumstellar gas in these objects, suggesting that they could all be Class 0 protostars (Hurt, Barsony & Wooten 1996). We present new 12, 25, 60, & 100 mu m HIRES processed IRAS images of the Serpens cloud core at FWHM resolutions of ~ 30('') --1(') . Such resolutions are necessary to help identify the individual contributions from the closely spaced sources. We use HIRES-processed point source models of the IRAS emission to determine new flux values and flux upper limits for all the protostellar candidates in the Serpens core. From the resulting SEDs we derive the dust temperature, circumstellar mass, bolometric luminosity, and evolutionary status of each protostellar candidate. Remarkably, we find all five millimeter continuum sources to share the defining characteristics of Class 0 protostars, potentially making the Serpens core the densest known collection of such objects.

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