A Structural Analysis of Star-Forming Region AFGL 490

TL;DR

This study provides a detailed structural analysis of the AFGL 490 star-forming region using multi-wavelength observations, revealing its cluster properties, density distribution, and mass segregation characteristics.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive catalog of YSOs in AFGL 490 and analyzes the spatial structure and density correlations of the cluster core.

Findings

Identified 360 YSOs, more than doubling previous counts.

Found the cluster core to be larger but less dense than similar clusters.

Discovered a power-law correlation between YSO and gas surface densities.

Abstract

We present Spitzer IRAC and MIPS observations of the star-forming region containing intermediate-mass young stellar object (YSO) AFGL 490. We supplement these data with near-IR 2MASS photometry and with deep SQIID observations off the central high extinction region. We have more than doubled the known membership of this region to 57 Class I and 303 Class II YSOs via the combined 1-24 um photometric catalog derived from these data. We construct and analyze the minimum spanning tree of their projected positions, isolating one locally over-dense cluster core containing 219 YSOs (60.8% of the region's members). We find this cluster core to be larger yet less dense than similarly analyzed clusters. Although the structure of this cluster core appears irregular, we demonstrate that the parsec-scale surface densities of both YSOs and gas are correlated with a power law slope of 2.8, as found for other similarly analyzed nearby molecular clouds. We also explore the mass segregation implications of AFGL 490's offset from the center of its core, finding that it has no apparent preferential central position relative to the low-mass members.