Star Formation in Bright Rimmed Clouds
Abstract
Bright-rimmed clouds (BRCs) are small, isolated molecular gas clouds with at least one edge ionized by neighboring OB stars. Because of their compact nature and physical isolation from the more turbulent star forming regions in giant molecular clouds, they are excellent laboratories for the study of triggered star formation. The goal of this program is to obtain a complete census of protostars and young stars in a distance-limited sample of BRCs. The spatial distributions of the embedded protostars and young stars will be analyzed for signatures of sequential, or triggered, star formation. We propose to image a sample of 13 BRCs in the four IRAC bands and in the 24 and 70 micron bands of MIPS. The sample is drawn from that of Sugitani et al. (1991, 1994) for BRCs within 1 kpc of the Sun. The proposed observations will have sufficient sensitivity to reliably detect the entire T-Tauri population within the sample, sub-stellar mass objects well into the brown dwarf regime, and Class 0 protostars down to 0.5 solar masses. They will provide, for the first time, a complete census of the space and luminosity distributions of young stars within these clouds.
- Publication:
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Spitzer Proposal
- Pub Date:
- May 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006sptz.prop30050F