A near-infrared survey of the entire R Coronae Australis cloud

M. Haas, F. Heymann, I. Domke, H. Drass, R. Chini, V. Hoffmeister
2008 Astronomy and Astrophysics  
To understand low- to intermediate-mass star-formation in the nearby R CrA molecular cloud, we try to identify the stellar content that is accessible with near-infrared observations. We obtained a JHK band mosaic of 10 x 60 arcmin square covering the entire RCrA molecular cloud with unprecedented sensitivity. We present a catalogue of about 3500 near-infrared sources fainter than the saturation limit K = 10 mag, reaching K = 18mag. We analysed the extended sources by inspecting their morphology
more » ... and point sources by means of colour-colour and colour-magnitude diagrams. Additionally, we compared the extinction inferred from the NIR data with the line-of-sight dust emission at 1.2 mm. Sources towards high dust emission but relatively low H-K show a projected mm-exces; these sources are either immediately surrounded by cold circumstellar material or, if too red to be a true foreground object, they are embedded in the front layer of the 1.2 mm emitting dust cloud. In both cases they are most likely associated with the cloud.
doi:10.1051/0004-6361:200809949 fatcat:4s7s4pexkrau3mhqfvxm2zmo3q