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Surveys of stars forming over entire giant molecular clouds have shown
that the majority of stars form in clusters. Therefore it has become increasingly important to observe and understand star formation in the clustered environment. A sample of young stellar clusters of varying stellar densities has been surveyed with the IRAC and MIPS instruments on the Spitzer Space Telescope. However, many of these clusters are portions of larger star formation complexes, and understanding the process of star formation in these complicated structures can be difficult. One result of this study is the discovery that many of these regions show a distributed population of protostars and pre-main sequence stars spread throughout the molecular cloud. This distributed mode of star formation may result from stars forming in situ, perhaps in Bok globule analogs. Bok globules, optically opaque dark clouds, are excellent probes of isolated star formation. Many are forming stars, yet none show compelling evidence for external triggering. Therefore, they are ideal locations for studying the process of star formation under the simplest conditions. Conversely, bright-rimmed clouds (BRCs) are compact molecular clouds strongly influenced by neighboring OB stars, usually apparent by a bright ionization front illuminating one edge of the region. BRCs are ideal locations for studying triggered star formation. I will present a comparative analysis of the embedded YSO populations of several Bok globules and BRCs in order to examine the role environment plays in the process of star formation in these simple structures.
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