Paul Anthony Dalba
University of Missouri St. Louis
Advisor: Dr. Bruce Wilking

Abstract
Within the constellation Serpens there are active star formation regions that contain stars in the early stages of evolution. By analyzing these young, cool stars in the visible and infrared ranges, a stronger understanding of the Serpens cloud can be obtained. The purpose of this photometric study was to find the ages and masses of young stars in an area of 30.72'x30.72' that had been identified by XMM-Newton. The data were collected on the night of May 25th, 2007 with the 2.3m telescope at Steward Observatory at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Other data were collected in June 2006 at the 4-m WIYN telescope using the multi-object spectrograph HYDRA. Using aperture photometry, the magnitudes of the sources were calculated and the completeness limits occur at R=18.25 mag, V=20.5 mag, and B=21.75 mag. Relative luminosities and effective surface temperatures were also calculated and Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams were created for 27 sources. It was determined that apart from two early-type stars, the sources had a masses ranging from 0.70 M? to 0.16 M? and a median age of 3 million years. Based on the reddening corrections for the sources, it was determined that star formation has been occurring for approximately 3 million years.