Taurus Spitzer survey: new candidate members

There are 215 previously identified members of the Taurus star-forming region in our ~44deg^2^ map; these members exhibit a range of Spitzer colors that we take to define young stars still surrounded by circumstellar dust (noting that ~20% of the bona fide Taurus members exhibit no detectable dust excesses).

We looked for new objects in the survey field with similar Spitzer properties, aided by extensive optical, X-ray, and ultraviolet imaging, and found 148 new candidate members of Taurus. We have obtained follow-up spectroscopy for about half the candidate sample, thus far confirming 34 new members, three probable new members, and 10 possible new members, an increase of 15%-20% in Taurus members. Of the objects for which we have spectroscopy, seven are now confirmed extragalactic objects, and one is a background Be star.