The Chandra View of the Very Young Cluster IC 348

Thomas Preibisch & Hans Zinnecker

Contributed paper presented at the 12th Cambridge Workshop "Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun", July 30th - August 3rd, 2001, Boulder, Colorado

Abstract

We summarize some of the initial results of a deep (53 ksec) X-ray imaging study of the very young stellar cluster IC 348 with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer on board the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Our image with a sensitivity limit of 1 x10^28 erg/sec reveals 215 X-ray sources. About 80% of all cluster members known from optical/infrared spectroscopic studies which have masses between ~ 0.15 M_sun and 2 M_sun are detected as X-ray sources. We discover X-ray emission at levels of ~ 10^28 erg/sec from 7 of the known brown dwarfs and brown dwarf candidates in IC348. The X-ray properties of the brown dwarfs are similar to those of late M-type field stars, suggesting that the X-ray emission of the sub-stellar objects originates from a hot corona.


For further information see our first and second paper in the Astronomical Journal. You can also get preprints of paper I and paper II.


ROSAT and CHANDRA images of IC 348 can be found here.



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