YSOVAR: The Ceph C Joint Spitzer/Chandra Monitoring Campaign

The Cepheus C star forming core is the least studied of six CO overdensities identified by Sargent (1977) in their survey of the Cepheus Molecular Cloud complex, which borders the optically revealed Ceph OB3 complex. Observations during Spitzer's cold mission, however, revealed that the Ceph C core hosts >50 YSOs, with a ratio of Class I / Class II sources similar to that of the nearby Rho Ophiuchus star forming region. We have conducted a joint Spitzer/Chandra monitoring program of this young cluster to probe the relationship between X-ray and mid-IR variability in young stars; in particular, we seek to test if stellar X-ray flares can trigger disk instabilities that will be revealed in the source's mid-IR light curve. We present our updated census of cluster members, constructed by supplementing the Spitzer-selected sample with our X-ray selected sample of Class III YSOs, and our initial analysis of the stellar properties and variability characteristics of Ceph C's YSO population, supported by a broad suite of ancillary observations (i.e., ground-based optical & NIR photometry, NIR polarimetric monitoring, moderate resolution [ 3500] NIR spectroscopy & archival data).