Star Formation in the Bok Globule CB54

Creators: Ciardi, David R.; Martín, Cynthia Gómez

Abstract

We present mid-infrared (10.4, 11.7, and 18.3 μm) imaging intended to locate and characterize the suspected protostellar components within the Bok globule CB54. We detect and confirm the protostellar status for the near-infrared source CB54YC1-II. The mid-infrared luminosity for CB54YC1-II was found to be L_(midir) ≈ 8 L_⊙, and we estimate a central source mass of M_* ≈ 0.8 M_⊙ (for a mass accretion rate of M = 10^(-6) M yr^(-1)). CB54 harbors another near-infrared source (CB54YC1-I), which was not detected by our observations. The nondetection is consistent with CB54YC1-I being a highly extinguished embedded young A or B star or a background G or F giant. An alternative explanation for CB54YC1-I is that the source is an embedded protostar viewed at an extremely high inclination angle, and the near-infrared detections are not of the central protostar, but of light scattered by the accretion disk into our line of sight. In addition, we have discovered three new mid-infrared sources, which are spatially coincident with the previously known dense core in CB54. The source temperatures (~100 K) and association of the mid-infrared sources with the dense core suggests that these mid-infrared objects may be embedded class 0 protostars.

Additional Information

© 2007 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2007 March 1; accepted 2007 April 2. These observations were carried out during payback time to C. Telesco for development of T-ReCS. The authors would like to thank Charlie Telesco, Chris Packham, and Margaret Moerchen for collecting these data. Portions of this work were supported by the California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. C. G. M. acknowledges support from a University of Florida Graduate Minority Fellowship, a SEAGEP Fellowship, and NSF grants AST97-3367 and AST 02-02976. C. G. M. would like to thank Eric McKenzie and Ana Matkovic for comments and suggestions. Based on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (United Kingdom), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Australian Research Council (Australia), CNPq (Brazil), and CONICET (Argentina). This research has made use of the NASA/ IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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