[117.03] The HST Survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 117 Star Formation, Embedded Young Stars and Their Disks
Oral, Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 10:00-11:30am, Golden Ballroom

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[117.03] The HST Survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster

M. Robberto (ESA-STScI), D. R. Soderblom (STScI), C. R. O'Dell, K. G. Stassun (Vanderbilt Univ.), L. A. Hillenbrand (Caltech), M, Simon (Stony Brook), E. D. Feigelson (Penn State Univ.), J. Najita (NOAO), J. Stauffer (IPAC-Caltech), M. Meyer (Steward Obs.), N. Panagia (ESA-STScI), M. Romaniello (ESO), F. Palla (Arcetri Obs.), J. Krist (JPL), I. N. Reid, P. McCullough, R. Makidon, M. McMaster, V. Kozurina-Platais, E. Bergeron, K. Smith (STScI), W. Sherry (NOAO/SAO)

We present early results from the HST Treasury Program "The HST survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster", currently in execution. This is the most extensive study of star formation ever made with the Hubble Space Telescope. For 104 orbits, the full complement of optical and IR cameras (ACS-WFC, WFPC2 and NIC3) are used in parallel to image in 9 filters a ~25'x25' field centered on the Trapezium. The survey probes the nearest HII region and its associated young cluster with unprecedented sensitivity (23-25 mag), dynamic range (12mag), spatial resolution (50mas) and spectral coverage (from the U-band to the H-band). The survey provides the richest database ever assembled for pre-main-sequence objects, enabling addressing of the most compelling questions in stellar evolution: the calibration of PMS evolutionary tracks, the structure of the IMF in different environments down to ~10M_Jup, the evolution of mass accretion vs. age and environment, disk dissipation, stellar multiplicity vs. disk frequency, etc. The HST survey is complemented by a substantial program of ground based observations, both imaging and spectroscopy, carried out at various observatories.

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