Exploring the Spectro-Morphological Evolution of Young Stellar Objects with Self-Organizing Maps

Autor(en)

David Hernandez, Odysseas Dionatos, Marc Audard, Gábor Marton, Julia Roquette, Ilknur Gezer

Abstrakt

We use self-organizing maps, an unsupervised machine learning technique, to explore the evolutionary stages and improve the classification of young stellar objects (YSOs). All current classification schemes solely rely on photometric measurements, disregarding the morphology of the YSOs. The NEMESIS (New Evolutionary Model for Early stages of Stars with Intelligent Systems) project aims to introduce a paradigm shift by integrating the often-overlooked morphological characteristics of YSOs into the classification methodologies. To that end, we collected cutout images from roughly 8000 YSOs in the Orion star-forming complex in the near and mid-infrared wavelengths. To investigate the different morphologies of young stellar objects, we relied on archival high-resolution image data from the Spitzer space telescope and the Visual and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). Utilizing PINK (Parallelized rotation and flipping INvariant Kohonen maps) we constructed a grid of spectro-morphological prototypes of YSOs. Since unique characteristics of each YSO such as inclination angle, aspherical geometries of the envelope, and reddening, are reflected in the YSO morphology, this grid of prototypes helps us to better discern between the different observational classes. By combining the PINK prototypes with the spectral energy distribution gained from photometric measurements, we provide a more robust and reliable classification scheme for young stellar objects. Determining the observational class of a YSO with better accuracy enables us to infer its true evolutionary stage with high confidence, helping us to better understand early stellar evolution and the timescales of star and planet formation.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Astrophysik

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Genf, HUN-REN Magyar Kutatási Hálózat

Publikationsdatum

07-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103003 Astronomie, 103004 Astrophysik

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/5f0d657d-9fff-47c9-81ee-1ffe014d52a4