Luminosity functions of YSO clusters in Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 star forming regions

Abstract

We have conducted deep near-infrared surveys of the Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 massive star forming regions using simultaneous observations of the JHK_s-band with the near-infrared camera SIRIUS on the UH 88-inch telescope and with SUBARU. The near-infrared surveys cover a total area of ~ 72 arcmin² of three regions with 10-σ limiting magnitudes of ~ 19.5, 18.4 and 17.3 in J, H and K_s-band, respectively. Based on the color-color and color-magnitude diagrams and their clustering properties, the candidate young stellar objects are identified and their luminosity functions are constructed in Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 star forming regions. A large number of previously unreported red sources (H-K > 2) have also been detected around these regions. We argue that these red stars are most probably pre-main-sequence stars with intrinsic color excesses. The detected young stellar objects show a clear clustering pattern in each region: the Class I-like sources are mostly clustered in molecular cloud region, while the Class II-like sources are in or around more evolved optical HII regions. We find that the slopes of the Ks-band luminosity functions of Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 are lower than the typical values reported for the young embedded clusters, and their stellar populations are primarily composed of low mass pre-main-sequence stars. From the slopes of the Ks-band luminosity functions, we infer that Sh-2 255, W3 Main and NGC 7538 star forming regions are rather young (age ≤ 1 Myr).