AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 10 Young Star Clusters
Poster, Monday, January 5, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Grand Hall

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[10.05] The Stellar Population of RCW 38

S. Wolk, B. Spitzbart, T. Bourke (CfA), J. Alves (ESO)

We report on results of a 96.7 ks Chandra observation of one of the youngest, most embedded and massive young stellar clusters studied to date in X-rays -- RCW 38. In addition to its mass and youth, this cluster is remarkable due to its extended X-ray emission which is surrounded by a continuum radio ring. With Chandra, we detect 485 point sources ranging down to a sensitivity limit of ~ 1028 ergs s-1. Of these sources, about 200 appear to be cluster members and most of these have IR counterparts in our VLT data. We have modeled the coronae as Raymond-Smith plasmas. We find that the column densities vary from 1020 to 1023 NH and temperature varies from 0.2 to 8 keV. Five percent of the sources exhibit flares while about 30% are classified as variable.

We acknowledge support from CXC contract (NAS8-39073) and and NASA/CXC grant GO2-3105X.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.