James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Arxiv: A JWST/MIRI and NIRCam Analysis of the Young Stellar Object Population in the Spitzer I region of NGC 6822 Published: 7/28/2023 8:51:43 PM Updated: 6/13/2024 10:14:27 PM

Paper abstract: We present an imaging survey of the Spitzer I star-forming region in NGC 6822conducted with the NIRCam and MIRI instruments onboard JWST. Located at adistance of 490 kpc, NGC 6822 is the nearest non-interacting low-metallicity(~0.2 Z_{\odot}) dwarf galaxy. It hosts some of the brightest known HIIregions in the local universe, including recently discovered sites ofhighly-embedded active star formation. Of these, Spitzer I is the youngest andmost active, and houses 90 color-selected candidate young stellar objects(YSOs) identified from Spitzer Space Telescope observations. We revisit the YSOpopulation of Spitzer I with these new JWST observations. By analyzingcolor-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) constructed with NIRCam and MIRI data, weestablish color selection criteria and construct spectral energy distributions(SEDs) to identify candidate YSOs and characterize the full population of youngstars, from the most embedded phase to the more evolved stages. In this way, wehave identified 140 YSOs in Spitzer I. Comparing to previous Spitzer studies ofthe NGC 6822 YSO population, we find that the YSOs we identify are fainter andless massive, indicating that the improved resolution of JWST allows us toresolve previously blended sources into multiple objects.