Spitzer Observations of Young Stellar Objects throughout the Milky-Way
First Author:
Thomas Robitaille
Email: tr9 AT st-andrews.ac.uk
University of St Andrews
School of Physics and Astronomy
North Haugh
St. Andrews KY16 9SS, United Kingdom
Abstract
In this talk I will present the results of a highly reliable census of ~20,000 intrinsically red sources selected using Spitzer/GLIMPSE observations of 274 square degrees of the Galactic mid-plane. This census includes over 10,000 young stellar objects - of which a large fraction are likely to be young stars with circumstellar disks - making this the largest sample of Spitzer-selected young stellar objects to date. This census effectively provides a map of star formation throughout the Galactic mid-plane as seen by Spitzer, showing hierarchical clustering, star formation in dark clouds, and possible isolated star formation. Because of the large number of sources in this census, we are able to empirically separate YSOs from AGB stars in a statistical way, and are therefore able to estimate the contamination from AGB stars in Spitzer observations of star formation regions in the Galactic mid-plane.
Link to PDF
