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Kristen Erickson
University of Missouri St. Louis
Advisor: Bruce Wilking
Abstract
We are working on a spectroscopic survey of an unbiased, extinction-limited sample of candidate young stars in the Serpens dark cloud. While infrared and X-ray surveys of the cloud have identified many young stellar objects (YSOs), these surveys yield no information on the YSOs' ages and masses and the infrared studies have a bias against YSOs with little circumstellar dust. The goal of our study is to identify YSOs and to estimate their ages and masses, so that the star forming history of the region and the initial mass function can be determined. Thus far, optical spectra have been obtained at the Bok 2.3m telescope on Kitt Peak in the red (5954 Å -7115 Å) and in the blue (3850 Å- 5566 Å) to derive effective temperatures and estimate surface gravities. Initial spectral types in the red were made by comparison of the relative width and depth of the blend (Ba II, Fe I, and Ca I) and H-alpha; hydrogen and calcium H and K lines were used in the blue. Preliminary results suggest that YSOs in this region have a median age of 3 Myrs, which is significantly older than the YSOs studied in previous infrared surveys. Using our data, we have constructed an HR diagram to get a precursory estimate of the stellar ages and cluster membership.
Kristen Erickson is a graduate student at the University of Missouri St. Louis, in the Astronomy and Physics Department. She received her undergraduate degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Arizona, Tucson. She is currently working on research in star formation and plans to earn her Ph.D. in Astronomy.
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