Computer Science
Scientific paper
Nov 2005
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005phdt.........8p&link_type=abstract
Ph.D dissertation, 2005. 132 pages; United States -- New York: The University of Rochester; 2005. Publication Number: AAT 31568
Computer Science
2
Brown Dwarf, Main Sequence Stars, Stellar Clusters, Orion Molecular Clouds
Scientific paper
This thesis focuses on a multiwavelength analysis of the young stellar and sub- stellar populations in the Orion Molecular Clouds 2 and 3 (OMC 2/3). Submillimeter surveys have found twenty-one pre-stellar and protostellar cores in OMC 2/3 (Chini et al. 1997) making it one of the most active regions of ongoing star formation known. Although OMC 2/3 has such a high density of star- forming cores, as shown by the richness of submillimeter sources, it has not been studied as extensively and to similar depth in the infrared as the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) to the south. Therefore deep near-infrared, mid-infrared and visible wavelength observations are obtained and analyzed to identify pre- main sequence stars and to select candidate sub-stellar objects in OMC 2/3 from background and foreground stars along the line-of-sight. Subsequent far-red and near-infrared spectroscopic observations were obtained to confirm the candidate sub-stellar objects as bona fide brown dwarfs.
With the stellar and sub-stellar populations of OMC 2/3 established, circumstellar disks are identified in many of these young objects through near- and mid-infrared excess emission. Spitzer Space Telescope photometry is used to detect mid-infrared excess emission in a dozen OMC 2/3 brown dwarfs, confirming that they exhibit circumstellar disks. Using the ground-based near- and mid- infrared observations, a circumstellar disk fraction is calculated for the pre- main sequence stars to be at least 84% within the central region of OMC 2/3.
The twenty-one submillimeter sources, as well as the dense gas traced by 13CO (1 [arrow right] 0) emission (Bally et al. 1987), follow a filamentary structure in OMC 2/3 instead of occupying a well-defined cluster region. One important question to address from this analysis is whether the filamentary appearance of OMC 2/3 implies clustered star formation along the filament or whether this implies that a combination of clustered and distributed star formation has taken place. In addition, by examining the spatial distribution of the identified pre-main sequence stars and sub-stellar objects in OMC 2/3 as compared with the molecular gas, the star formation pattern in OMC 2/3 will be compared to that of the ONC.
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