High Spatial Resolution Near-Infrared Images of Protostars in Taurus

L. GRAMAJO, B.A. WHITNEY, M. GOMEZ

Pucon, Chile

Congreso; XI IAU Regional Latin American Meeting of Astronomy; 2005

IAU

We present near-infrared K and L images of 15 embedded Class I objects belonging to the Taurus-Auriga molecular cloud. L-band images were obtained with the COB, at the KPNO 4-m telescope, used in the diffraction limited mode (DLIRIM) while K-band data were observed with both the COB and the STERLIMCam attached to the 1.2-m telescope of the Fred L. Whipple observatory in Arizona. In this analysis we use the radiative transfer code of Whitney et al. (2003 ApJ 598:1099) to model these images. We adopt a geometric configuration that consists of a central illuminating source surrounded by an accretion disk and infalling envelope. Perpendicular to the disk, a bipolar outflow excavates cavities along the rotational axis of the envelope. We constructed a grid of models for the centrifugal radius (R_c), accretion rate (M_dot), opening angle (theta) and inclination angle (i). In addition we tried two grain models in the envelopes, a model with r_V=4.3 and the ISM grains. We obtained physical and geometric parameters for each of the analyzed protostars. We compare our results derived from high and low resolution images with those obtained by other authors. We find that envelopes with grains corresponding to R_V=4.3 reproduce better the real images than envelopes with ISM grains.