2004/06/02 by James Muzerolle, J. Muzerolle, S. T. Megeath +24 · 3 citations
Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Cluster (spacecraft) #Computer science #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Infrared #Medicine #Molecular cloud #Photoionization #Photometer #Physics #Population #Star cluster #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #T Tauri star #Young stellar object #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/422451
13 pages, 4 figures. Accepted to the Spitzer special issue of ApJS
arxiv created 2004/06/02 · openalex publication_date 2004/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present observations of the star formation region NGC 7129 taken with the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). A significant population of sources, likely pre-main-sequence members of the young stellar cluster, are revealed outside the central photoionization region. Combining Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and ground-based near-infrared images, we have obtained colors and spectral energy distributions for some 60 objects. The [3.6]-[4.5] versus [8]-[24] color-color plane shows sources clustered at several different loci, which roughly correspond to the archetypal evolutionary sequence Class 0, I, II, and III. We obtain preliminary classifications for 36 objects and find significant numbers of both Class I and II objects. Most of the pre-main-sequence candidates are associated with the densest part of the molecular cloud surrounding the photoionization region, indicating active star formation over a broad area outside the central cluster. We discuss three Class II candidates that exhibit evidence of inner disk clearing, which would be some of the youngest known examples of a transition from accretion to optically thin quiescent disks.