Special Session: New Surveys of the Taurus Molecular Cloud
1/8/2008 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
1. Motivation
The Taurus Molecular Cloud has long been a valued target for studies of star formation and the interstellar medium. Its proximity (140 pc) and displacement from the Galactic Plane (b ~ -19) afford high spatial resolution views of a star forming region with little or no confusion from background stars and gas. From many investigations over the years, the Taurus Cloud has been established as the prototype example of low mass, isolated star formation. However, the large angular extent of the Taurus cloud (>100 deg^2) on the sky has limited most of these previous investigations to small, targeted areas or full coverage with coarse angular resolution. Given the complexity of the ISM and the star formation process, such myopic views may miss the fine, structural details or fail to recognize large scale patterns of the gas or young stellar object population. Yet such structure provides critical clues to the prevailing physical processes that regulate the formation of stars.
The development of imaging arrays from X rays to radio wavelengths, have enabled the construction of high spatial dynamic range measurements of star forming regions. Over the last several years, there has been a concerted campaign with both ground (Arecibo, FCRAO, CFHT, SDSS) and space based (XMM-Newton, Spitzer) telescopes equipped with such instrumentation to image the stellar, gas, and dust components of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. These surveys have been recently completed and have produced spectacular images and spectra.
2. Justification
This Special Session devoted to the Taurus Molecular Cloud is a timely and visible forum to present the initial results from these surveys to the community. These major surveys offer unique, complementary views of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. On its own, each data set addresses targeted science objectives related to the ISM and star formation. However, the scientific value of these surveys lies in the synthesis of this multi-wavelength set of information. This Special Session provides a focus and platform for members of each team to discuss such data synthesis that is essential to the full scientific potential of these surveys. Moreover, since most of these data are to be made available to the community, the survey presentations and associated poster session may enable new applications of the data by groups external to the survey teams.
We have asked the Principal Investigators of each major Taurus project to introduce their respective surveys and summarize the initial science results that have emerged from the data. A coordinated poster session offers an opportunity for more detailed descriptions of these science programs as well as other Taurus-centric research from investigators external to these survey projects. An opening introductory talk will provide an overview of the Taurus cloud, its importance to the study of star formation, and the need for multi-wavelength survey campaigns. The first half of the session will be devoted toward the extended gas and dust components as measured by the HI 21cm line, 12CO and 13CO J=1-0 emission, and the Spitzer Space Telescope as these relate to the gas dynamics and structure of the cloud. The second half of the session will focus on the census of the young stellar object population and physical processes studied in the framework of the surveys.
Organizer: Mark Heyer, Univ. of Massachusetts