L. Cambrésy, G. Marton, O. Feher, L. V. Tóth, N. Schneider
The Rosette complex is a well studied region of the galactic plane which presents the apparent characteristics of a triggered star forming region. This is however still debated as no strong evidence corroborates this statement. In this study, we focus on characterizing the young stellar population in the Rosette to improve our understanding of the processes that regulate the star formation in this region. We propose an original method relying on the joint analysis of the star color and density in the near-infrared. It leads to the mapping of the molecular cloud spatial distribution and the detection of the embedded clusters with their characterization in term of member number and age estimation. We identified 13 clusters, 2 of them are new discoveries, and we estimated that the total number of young stellar objects in the Rosette ranges between 4000 and 8000 members. We found the age distribution of the young clusters is not consistent with a general triggered scenario for the star formation in this molecular cloud. This study attests the Rosette complex evolution is not governed by the influence of its OB star population. It suggests the simple morphological appearance of an active region is not sufficient to conclude about the triggering role in the star formation process. Our method to constrain the cluster properties using UKIDSS and WISE data is proven efficient and the studies of other regions of the galactic plane would definitely benefit from this approach.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.4756
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