Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published February 1, 2008 | Published
Journal Article Open

The Spitzer Gould belt survey of large nearby interstellar clouds: discovery of a dense embedded cluster in the Serpens-Aquila rift

Abstract

We report the discovery of a nearby, embedded cluster of young stellar objects, associated filamentary infrared dark cloud, and 4.5 μm shock emission knots from outflows detected in Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared imaging of the Serpens-Aquila Rift obtained as part of the Spitzer Gould Belt Legacy Survey. We also present radial velocity measurements of the region from molecular line observations obtained with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) that suggest the cluster is comoving with the Serpens Main embedded cluster 3° to the north. We therefore assign it the same distance, 260 pc. The core of the new cluster, which we call Serpens South, is composed of an unusually large fraction of protostars (77%) at high mean surface density (>430 pc^−2) and short median nearest neighbor spacing (3700 AU). We perform basic cluster structure characterization using nearest neighbor surface density mapping of the YSOs and compare our findings to other known clusters with equivalent analyses available in the literature.

Additional Information

© 2008 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 November 21; accepted 2007 December 14; published 2008 January 8. We thank T. Dame and E. Winston for providing data from Grabelsky et al. (1987) and Winston et al. (2007) in electronic form. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA.

Attached Files

Published - GUTapjl08.pdf

Files

GUTapjl08.pdf
Files (387.2 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:5336504f5179a126e143fe04829e2bd5
387.2 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023