StarChasers/Rebull

The StarChasers team will be looking for new young stellar objects (YSOs) in the constellation Cassiopeia where other people have already found a few YSOs; StarChasers will be looking to see (a) if the published list of YSOs seem to be real YSOs, given additional data, and (b) if they can find additional YSO candidates.

Our research will focus on identifying young stellar object (YSO) candidates in two regions along the northern galactic plane in the constellation Cassiopeia: One region we’ve called SCR 1 (centered around 01:23:46.48 +61:42:26.4, also known as “New SFR 3” from Wilson et al. 2023, and portions of which are also known as Sh 2-187) and one we’ve called SCR 2 (centered around 00:29:32.05 +65:26:35.9). These regions have also been included in previous studies of the galactic plane looking for YSOs; over both these regions, Frata et al. (2021) found 19 YSO candidates using Hα-excess, Winston et al. (2020) discovered 52 YSO candidates using infrared excess, Zari et al. (2018) identified 8 candidates using proper motion, and Wilson et al. (2023) located 30 Class II YSOs using a machine learning algorithm that looked at multiple search criteria. In our study, we will combine archival data from multiple wavelengths to further assess each previously published YSO candidate, as well as discover new, previously unidentified candidates using IR excess. We will use infrared data from 2MASS, WISE, Spitzer, and Herschel, as well as optical data from Gaia, IPHAS, and PanSTARRS to create a band-merged catalog that we will use to identify and evaluate YSO candidates using color-color diagrams, color-magnitude diagrams, spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and visual inspection of images. By using more data than any previous individual study of our two regions, we aspire to be able to make an up-to-date assessment of whether the previously identified YSO candidates are really YSOs, as well as identify new candidates that have been overlooked in prior studies.