IC 417/Rebull

IC417 : using WISE, 2MASS, Spitzer/Warm IRAC, UKIDSS, IPHAS, and literature optical data to look for young stars in the IC417 region.

We propose to look for candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) in an interstellar nursery found in the constellation Auriga, the IC 417 nebula.  IC 417 is towards the Galactic anti-center, in the Perseus arm, at a distance of ~2.3 kpc.  Stars form from clouds of interstellar dust and gas. A signature of star formation is excess infrared (IR) emission associated with the stars, suggesting circumstellar dust around these young stars.  Our investigation will look for infrared excesses using near- and mid-IR data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS).  We will build on past studies of this region by Jose et al. (2008) and Camargo et al. (2012), who identified several clusters they believe to be young (a few million years old), and associated with IC 417.  We will use a series of color cuts in various 2MASS/WISE color-magnitude and color-color diagrams following Koenig & Leisawitz (2014) to identify YSO candidates; we will inspect these objects in the 2MASS and WISE images and inspect their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) assembled from archival data ranging from wavelengths of 0.7 to 22 mm.  Through this analysis process, we will assemble a set of objects we believe to be YSO candidates.  From this set of likely members, we can start the process of determining the distribution of masses within the cluster (the initial mass function, IMF) and total cluster mass for comparison to other clusters in our Galaxy and in other galaxies. Obtaining a complete IMF for this region is important for assessing if there is a difference between the IMF in the outer Galaxy and the inner Galaxy.