Young Stars and their Variability with LSST

TL;DR

This study proposes using LSST to observe young stars in the Carina region, aiming to characterize their short-term and long-term variability and relate it to stellar and environmental properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observational strategy with high-cadence, multicolor monitoring to statistically analyze variability in young stars across different timescales.

Findings

First statistically significant data on young star variability

Correlation of variability with stellar properties like mass and age

Insights into the influence of circumstellar disks and environment

Abstract

Young stars exhibit short-term photometric variability caused by mass accretion events from circumstellar disks, the presence of dusty warps within the inner disks, starspots that rotate across the stellar surfaces, and flares. Long-term variability also occurs owing to starspot longevity and cycles, and from changes in stellar angular momenta and activity as the stars age. We propose to observe the Carina star-forming region in different bands with a cadence of 30 minutes every night for one week per year to clarify the nature of both the short-term and long-term variability of the thousands of young stars in this region. By obtaining well-sampled multicolor lightcurves of this dense young cluster, LSST would acquire the first statistically significant data on how these objects vary on both short and long timescales. This information will allow us to relate the observed variability to stellar properties such as mass, age, binarity, and to environmental properties such as location within or exterior to the H II region, and to the presence or absence of a circumstellar disk.