Bright-rimmed clouds (BRCs), illuminated and shaped by nearby OB stars, arepotential sites of recent/ongoing star formation. Here we present an opticaland infrared photometric study of three BRCs: BRC 5, BRC 7 and BRC 39 to obtaina census of the young stellar population, thereby inferring the star formationscenario, in these regions. In each BRC, the Class I sources are found to belocated mostly near the bright rim or inside the cloud, whereas the Class IIsources are preferentially outside, with younger sources closer to the rim.This provides strong support to sequential star formation triggered byradiation driven implosion due to the UV radiation. Moreover, each BRC containsa small group of young stars being revealed at its head, as the next-generationstars. In particular, the young stars at the heads of BRC 5 and BRC 7 are foundto be intermediate/high mass stars, which, under proper conditions, maythemselves trigger further star birth, thereby propagating star formation outto long distances.
展开▼
