The Spitzer Space Telescope Survey of the Orion A and B Molecular Clouds II: the Spatial Distribution and Demographics of Dusty Young Stellar Objects

TL;DR

This study maps the distribution of dusty young stellar objects in Orion, revealing clustering patterns, structural properties, and star formation efficiencies, and compares these with other molecular clouds to understand star formation processes.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to correct for spatial incompleteness and provides detailed analysis of YSO demographics and cluster structures in Orion.

Findings

59% of YSOs are in the Orion Nebular Cluster

Cluster peak densities scale linearly with number of members

Star formation efficiency varies significantly across regions

Abstract

We analyze the spatial distribution of dusty young stellar objects (YSOs) identified in the Spitzer Survey of the Orion Molecular clouds, augmenting these data with Chandra X-ray observations to correct for incompleteness in dense clustered regions. We also devise a scheme to correct for spatially varying incompleteness when X-ray data are not available. The local surface densities of the YSOs range from 1 pc$^{-2}$ to over 10,000 pc$^{-2}$, with protostars tending to be in higher density regions. This range of densities is similar to other surveyed molecular clouds with clusters, but broader than clouds without clusters. By identifying clusters and groups as continuous regions with surface densities $\ge10$ pc$^{-2}$, we find that 59% of the YSOs are in the largest cluster, the Orion Nebular Cluster (ONC), while 13% of the YSOs are found in a distributed population. A lower fraction of protostars in the distributed population is evidence that it is somewhat older than the groups and clusters. An examination of the structural properties of the clusters and groups show that the peak surface densities of the clusters increase approximately linearly with the number of members. Furthermore, all clusters with more than 70 members exhibit asymmetric and/or highly elongated structures. The ONC becomes azimuthally symmetric in the inner 0.1 pc, suggesting that the cluster is only $\sim 2$ Myr in age. We find the star formation efficiency (SFE) of the Orion B cloud is unusually low, and that the SFEs of individual groups and clusters are an order of magnitude higher than those of the clouds. Finally, we discuss the relationship between the young low mass stars in the Orion clouds and the Orion OB 1 association, and we determine upper limits to the fraction of disks that may be affected by UV radiation from OB stars or by dynamical interactions in dense, clustered regions.