Finding cluster members

This document is also known as "Luisa’s Table of Characteristics of Young Stars for Determining Cluster Members".

Introduction

Whenever we study stellar clusters the question is: Which objects are the cluster members? This is easier with young clusters than old because the young stars are noticeably different than older stars, so it is easier to distinguish the young cluster members from the surrounding interloper stars (foreground and background populations). This process has a nice analogy with people too... when the IC 2118 teacher team came to visit the SSC, we all went out to lunch at a local Mexican place. If someone who didn't know any of us walked into the restaurant while we were eating lunch, as a group of astronomers, we are (for the most part! ;) ) not distinctly different than the rest of the adults in there, so we’d be difficult to pick out as a distinct ‘cluster’ of people, especially while we weren’t all physically co-located -- some of us were in line, getting salsa, and/or at the table. But, if a group from a day care center had been there, it would have been immediately clearly obvious that the children were a group that was different than the rest of the people in the restaurant. Moreover, the amount of time a human spends as a child is short compared to their entire lifetime, and so it is with stars. You have to seek out the group of young stars/humans in order to study their development.

Astronomers use as many of the following characteristics of young stars as possible to determine cluster membership, and we will do the same.

After reading this table, if you now go back and look at Maria Kun’s original IC2118 papers, see how many of these items she’s listing in making her case that she’s found young stars in IC 2118. I haven’t done this. Have I missed any in the list below?

Anatomy of a young star system (for reference) is to the right.

Characteristics	Pros	Cons
IR Excess (IR is emitted by circumstellar matter)	Need a large field of view to efficiently study large parts of the sky at once need Spitzer for mid- and far-IR work (in terms of wavelength coverage and efficiently covering large parts of the sky) we have the data already! (this is a BIG pro!!) Can find all of the stars with an infrared excess pretty straightforwardly. Real life examples of people using this method as a primary method for finding young stars: Padgett et al., “An Aggregate of Young Stellar Disks in Lynds 1228 South,” 2004, ApJS, 154, 433; Joergensen et al., “The Spitzer c2d Survey of Large, Nearby, Interstellar Clouds. III. Perseus Observed with IRAC,” 2006, ApJ, 645, 1246	need Spitzer (that is, if we didn’t already have the data, as it would be in the general case of cluster membership in general, not specifically in IC2118) will only find those stars which still have enough disk left to make an IR excess – will be unable to distinguish young stars without disks (Class IIIs) from the interlopers.
(Flaring) X-rays (young stars emit lots of X-rays because they are completely convective and fast-rotating, so they have lots of starspots and therefore lots of flares, big and small)	Need something that can detect X-rays – CXO (Chandra X-ray Observatory) or XMM (X-Ray Multi-mirror Mission) Can find all of the stars that are bright in X-rays pretty straightforwardly Real life examples of people using this method as a primary method for finding young stars: Wolk et al., “X-Ray and Infrared Point Source Identification and Characteristics in the Embedded, Massive Star-Forming Region RCW 38,” 2006, AJ, 132, 1100, Alcala et al., “New weak-line T Tauri stars in Orion from the ROSAT all-sky survey,” 1996, A&AS, 119, 7; [note that both of these folks went out and got additional data on at least some of their objects to prove that they were members.]	need space-based mission to see X-rays Need a large field of view to efficiently study large parts of the sky at once; all missions have small FOV (due to methodology for detection) takes long time (like 25,000 seconds for one 5x5 arcminute field) not all might be detectable might not be flaring will only find those stars that are X-ray active enough (might miss those that are deeply embedded or have big enough thick disks to block out the X-rays)