Spitzer-MIPS survey of the young stellar content in the Vela Molecular Cloud-D

Abstract

A new, unbiased Spitzer-MIPS imaging survey (~1.8 square degs) of the young stellar content of the Vela Molecular Cloud-D is presented. The survey is complete down to 5mJy and 250mJy at 24micron (mu) and 70mu, respectively. 849 sources are detected at 24mu and 52 of them also have a 70mu counterpart. The VMR-D region is one that we have already partially mapped in dust and gas millimeter emission, and we discuss the correlation between the Spitzer compact sources and the mm contours. About half of the 24mu sources are located inside the region delimited by the 12CO(1-0) contours (corresponding to only one third of the full area mapped with MIPS) with a consequent density increase of about 100% of the 24mu sources [four times for 70mu ones] moving from outside to inside the CO contours. About 400 sources have a 2MASS counterpart. So we have constructed a Ks vs. Ks-[24] diagram and identified the protostellar population. We find an excess of Class I sources in VMR-D in comparison with other star forming regions. This result is reasonably biased by the sensitivity limits, or, alternatively, may reflect a very short lifetime (<=10^6yr) of the protostellar content in this cloud. The MIPS images have identified embedded cool objects in most of the previously identified starless cores; in addition, there are 6 very young, possibly Class 0 objects identified. Finally we report finding of the driving sources for a set of five out of six very compact protostellar jets previously discovered in near-infrared images.

29 pages, 14 figures. To appear in Ap.J

References in corpus (7)

• The Spitzer c2d Survey of Large, Nearby, Interstellar Clouds: VI. Perseus Observed with MIPS
• The Spitzer c2d Survey of Large, Nearby, Interstellar Clouds VIII. Serpens Observed with MIPS
• A multi-wavelength census of star formation activity in the young embedded cluster around Serpens/G3-G6
• Mapping molecular emission in Vela Molecular Ridge Cloud D
• Star formation in the Vela Molecular Ridge. Large scale mapping of cloud D in the mm continuum
• Near- and Far-Infrared Counterparts of Millimeter Dust Cores in the Vela Molecular Ridge Cloud D
• Number ratios of young stellar objects in embedded clusters

Cited by in corpus (11)

• A General Catalogue of Molecular Hydrogen Emission-Line Objects (MHOs) in Outflows from Young Stars
• The BLAST Survey of the Vela Molecular Cloud: Physical Properties of the Dense Cores in Vela-D
• The New EXor Outburst of ESO-H-alpha~99 observed by Gaia ATLAS and TESS
• The Spitzer-IRAC Point Source Catalog of the Vela-D Cloud
• Pre-Main Sequence variables in the VMR-D : identification of T Tauri-like accreting protostars through Spitzer-IRAC variability
• Spitzer-IRAC survey of molecular jets in Vela-D
• High-resolution images of two wiggling stellar jets, MHO 1502 and MHO 2147, obtained with GSAOI+GeMS
• The BLAST Survey of the Vela Molecular Cloud: Dynamical Properties of the Dense Cores in Vela-D
• Herbig-Haro objects and mid-infrared outflows in the Vela C molecular cloud
• A spectral line survey of the starless and proto-stellar cores detected by BLAST toward the Vela-D molecular cloud
• Testing circumstellar disk lifetimes in young embedded clusters associated with the Vela Molecular Ridge