Cool Stars 14 - Submitted Abstract # 243
This version created on 05 October 2006

The Taurus Spitzer Legacy Project


Deborah Padgett, SSC
Misato Fukagawa, Nagoya University
Luisa Rebull, SSC
Alberto Noriega-Crespo, SSC
Sean Carey, SSC
Lynne Hillenbrand, Caltech
Karl Stapelfeldt, JPL
Tracy Huard, SAO
Susan Terebey, CSULA
Dean Hines, SSI
Tim Brooke, Caltech
Caer McCabe, JPL
Manuel Guedel, Paul Sherrer Institut
Gillian Knapp, Princeton
Francois Menard,  Observatoire de Grenoble
Jean-Louis Monin, Observatoire de Grenoble
Marc Audard, University of Geneva
Neal Evans, University of Texas - Austin
Lori Allen, SAO
Steve Strom, NOAO

Lacking young stellar clusters and luminous OB stars, Taurus hosts a
distributed mode of low-mass star formation that has proven
particularly amenable to observational and theoretical study.  In
2005, our team mapped the central 30  square degrees of the main
Taurus cloud using the IRAC and MIPS cameras on the Spitzer Space
Telescope.  Next spring, we will map an additional 24 square degrees
of Taurus with Spitzer.  Together, these images will form the largest
contiguous Spitzer map of a single star-forming region (and any region
outside the galactic plane).  Our Legacy team is currently generating
re-reduced mosaics and source catalogs, which will be available to the
community in 2006 and 2007.  The Spitzer survey is a central and
crucial part of a multiwavelength study of the Taurus cloud complex
that we have performed using XMM, CFHT, and the Sloan Survey.  The
seven photometry data points from Spitzer allow us to characterize the
circumstellar environment of each object, and, in conjunction with NIR
photometry, construct a complete luminosity function for the cloud
members that will place constraints on the initial mass function.  We
present a preliminary catalog of several hundred thousand IRAC and
thousands of MIPS sources.  Initial results from our study include new
disks around brown dwarfs, new low luminosity YSO candidates, and new
Herbig-Haro objects.

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