Deep JHKs and Spitzer Imaging of Four Isolated Molecular Cloud Cores

TL;DR

This study uses multi-wavelength observations to analyze young stellar objects and dust properties in four molecular cloud cores, revealing evidence of grain growth and localized dust destruction.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed mid-infrared extinction law measurements across multiple cores, highlighting variations due to outflows and confirming grain growth in dense regions.

Findings

L1152 and L1228 show dust grain destruction in outflow regions.

Average extinction law suggests grain growth beyond diffuse interstellar medium.

24-micron extinction law exceeds dust model predictions.

Abstract

We present observations in eight wavebands from 1.25-24 microns of four dense cores: L204C-2, L1152, L1155C-2, and L1228. Our goals are to study the YSO population of these cores and to measure the mid-infrared extinction law. With our combined near-infrared and Spitzer photometry, we classify each source in the cores as, among other things, background stars, galaxies, or embedded young stellar objects (YSOs). L1152 contains three YSOs and L1228 has seven, but neither L204C-2 nor L1155C-2 appear to contain any YSOs. We estimate an upper limit of 7x10^-5 to 5x10^-4 solar luminosities for any undiscovered YSOs in our cores. We also compute the line-of-sight extinction law towards each background star. These measurements are averaged spatially, to create chi-squared maps of the changes in the mid-infrared extinction law throughout our cores, and also in different ranges of extinction. From the chi-squared maps we identify two small regions in L1152 and L1228 where the outflows in those cores appear to be destroying the larger dust grains, thus altering the extinction law in those regions. On average, however, our extinction law is relatively flat from 3.6 to 24 microns for all ranges of extinction and in all four cores. From 3.6 to 8 microns this law is consistent with a dust model that includes larger dust grains than the diffuse interstellar medium, which suggests grain growth has occurred in our cores. At 24 microns, our extinction law is 2-4 times higher than predicted by dust models. However, it is similar to other empirical measurements.