An IRAS Hires study of low mass star formation in the Taurus molecular ring

摘要

The Taurus molecular cloud supposedly has no star clusters but only isolated star formation. However, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) shows us that a small star cluster is currently forming in Taurus. Most of the sources are deeply embedded and are probably low-mass protostars. We use High Resolution (HiRes) images of the IRAS data from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) to look for additional infrared members of the cluster. We also investigate the question of whether the infrared emission matches predictions for protostellar sources by examining whether the dust emission is resolved on scales of one arcminute (approx. 10(exp 17) cm). With the exception of a luminous visible star, HD 29647, we find that the sources L1527, TMC1A, TMC1, TMC1C, tMR1, and IC2087 are unresolved in the HiRes images at 60 microns. Further analysis of IC2087 shows that it is unresolved at all four IRAS wavelengths.