1997/12/01 by Lee Carkner, Eric E. Mamajek, Eric Mamajek +8 · 31 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxy #Luminosity #Molecular cloud #Physics #Pleiades #Population #ROSAT #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #T Tauri star
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/304885
published in The Astrophysical Journal 490(2), 735-743 (IOP Publishing)
openalex publication_date 1997/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
An 8.4 GHz VLA survey of 91 recently discovered lithium-rich late-type stars from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey and pointed observations is presented. These objects lie in the vicinity of the Taurus-Auriga star-forming region ( d ≃ 140 pc); however, some are dispersed nearly 30° from known active star-forming cloud cores. This sample represents a spatially complete, flux-limited population of X-ray-bright young stars both within and away from the primary Tau-Aur stellar nurseries. Of the 91 sources, 29 are detected in this radio survey with a sensitivity limit of ~0.15 mJy. If they are at the distance of the star-forming clouds, we find that 32% of widely distributed young stars with L X ≥ 5 × 10 28 ergs s -1 have radio luminosity densities in excess of 3.5 × 10 15 ergs s -1 Hz -1 . This detection rate, the ranges of radio and X-ray luminosities, and the L R / L X ratios are consistent with known young weak-lined T Tauri stars (ages ~10 6 yr) that reside within the Taurus molecular clouds, but they are considerably higher than a zero-age main-sequence population such as the Pleiades (age ≃7 × 10 7 yr). The radio properties thus support the pre-main-sequence classification of the stars. They fitted well among other active young stars on the empirical L R versus L X diagram, implying that solar-type gyrosynchrotron activity is the radio emission mechanism.