A Wide-Field Survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster in the Near-Infrared

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive near-infrared survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster, cataloging about 7800 sources and analyzing their properties to understand stellar populations and extinction effects.

Contribution

It presents the largest deep near-infrared catalog of the Orion Nebula Cluster with high positional accuracy and photometry, enabling detailed analysis of stellar and sub-stellar populations.

Findings

Inner region sources are mainly reddened T Tauri stars.

Outer fields are dominated by field stars with decreasing extinction.

Luminosity functions suggest a flat sub-stellar population.

Abstract

We present J, H and K photometry of the Orion Nebula Cluster obtained at the CTIO/Blanco 4 m telescope in Cerro Tololo with the ISPI imager. From the observations we have assembled a catalog of about 7800 sources distributed over an area of approximately 30'x40', the largest of any survey deeper than 2MASS in this region. The catalog provides absolute coordinates accurate to about 0.15 arcseconds and 3sigma photometry in the 2MASS system down to J 19.5mag, H 18.0mag, K 18.5mag, enough to detect planetary size objects 1 Myr old under Av 10mag of extinction at the distance of the Orion Nebula. We present a preliminary analysis of the catalog, done comparing the (J-H, H-K) color-color diagram, the (H, J-H) and (K, H-K) color-magnitude diagrams and the JHK luminosity functions of three regions at increasing projected distance from the Trapezium. Sources in the inner region typically show IR colors compatible with reddened T Tauri stars, whereas the outer fields are dominated by field stars seen through an amount of extinction which decreases with the distance from the center. The color-magnitude diagrams make it possible to clearly distinguish between the main ONC population, spread across the full field, and background sources. The luminosity functions of the inner region, corrected for completeness, remain relatively flat in the sub-stellar regime regardless of the strategy adopted to remove background contamination.