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Published December 1, 2013 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

A Wide-field Near- and Mid-Infrared Census of Young Stars in NGC 6334

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the rate and efficiency of star formation in the NGC 6334 star-forming region. We obtained observations at J, H, and K_s taken with the NOAO Extremely Wide-Field Infrared Imager and combined them with observations taken with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope at wavelengths = 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm. We also analyzed previous observations taken at 24 μm using the Spitzer MIPS camera as part of the MIPSGAL survey. We have produced a point source catalog with >700, 000 entries. We have identified 2283 young stellar object (YSO) candidates, 375 Class I YSOs, and 1908 Class II YSOs using a combination of existing IRAC-based color classification schemes that we have extended and validated to the near-IR for use with warm Spitzer data. We have identified multiple new sites of ongoing star formation activity along filamentary structures extending tens of parsecs beyond the central molecular ridge of NGC 6334. By mapping the extinction, we derived an estimate for the gas mass, 2.2 × 10^5 M_☉. The heavy concentration of protostars along the dense filamentary structures indicates that NGC 6334 may be undergoing a "mini-starburst" event with Σ_(SFR) > 8.2 M_☉ Myr^(–1) pc^(–2) and SFE > 0.10. We have used these estimates to place NGC 6334 in the Kennicutt-Schmidt diagram to help bridge the gap between observations of local low-mass star-forming regions and star formation in other galaxies.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 June 28; accepted 2013 September 25; published 2013 November 8. We acknowledge the assistance of Robert Gutermuth, Vallia Antoniou, Andres Guzman, and Rafael Martinez during the preparation of this manuscript. This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under NASA contract 1407. S.W. acknowledges partial support from NASA grants NNX12AI55G and NNX10AD68G, and JPL-RSA 1369565. Facilities: Spitzer (IRAC, MIPS)

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Published - 0004-637X_778_2_96.pdf

Submitted - 1310.0821v1.pdf

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Created:
August 22, 2023
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October 25, 2023