Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013
Poster 2B044
A First Look at the Disk Population in the Auriga/California Giant Molecular Cloud
Broekhoven-Fiene, Hannah (University of Victoria)
Matthews, Brenda (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics)
Harvey, Paul (University of Texas at Austin)
Abstract:
The Auriga-California Molecular Cloud (AMC) is a giant molecular cloud in the nearby Gould Belt of star-forming regions. Its membership in the Gould Belt was only recently identified; therefore, it is relatively unstudied compared to other well-known local clouds. Although it has a comparable mass and size to the Orion Molecular Cloud, it is forming far fewer stars. In fact the star formation in the AMC resembles more closely that of low-mass star-forming regions such as Taurus and Perseus. We use observations of the AMC with Spitzer, Herschel and SCUBA-2 to probe the disk population and compare it to the number of protostellar and starless cores in the cloud. We further use these data to constrain the age of the cloud and its star formation history. Comparison of our Spitzer results to the disk and YSO populations in Orion, Taurus and Perseus reveals that there is a high number of Class I and flat sources relative to Class II sources in the AMC, which suggests that the AMC is a relatively unevolved cloud in the Gould Belt. A first look with measurements from Spitzer observations suggests that ACMC disk properties are not vastly different from those in other regions. Finally, we describe our plans to search for evidence of grain growth in AMC disks using ALMA and the Jansky VLA (for which some time has been allocated).
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