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Session 24 - Star Formation in the Galaxy & the LMC.
Display session, Tuesday, June 10
South Main Hall,
H-R diagrams are presented for the very young galactic clusters Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16, which are the two most populous clusters in the region of vigorous star formation surrounding \eta Carinae. Point-spread function photometry of UBV CCD images is presented to a limiting magnitude of V \approx 19 for over 560 stars in Tr 16 and 290 stars in Tr 14. We have also obtained similar data for local background fields. Existing proper motions (Cudworth et al. 1993) have allowed us to analyze the reddening of both cluster members and the local background stars, thus providing an excellent determination of the cluster membership far deeper than the original proper motions. This work has revealed a significant population of protostars in both clusters. The location of the protostars in the diagram indicates that the theoretical "stellar birthline" of Palla and Stahler (1993) is much closer to the observations than that of Beech and Mitalas (1986). We also use the protostars and most massive stars to put limits on the coevality of the cluster.
