The NAN complex. I. IRAC observations

The resulting photometry is merged with that at JHKs from Two Micron All Sky Survey and a more spatially limited BVI survey from previous ground-based work. We use a mixture of color-color diagrams to select a minimally contaminated set of more than 1600 objects that we claim are young stellar objects (YSOs) associated with the star-forming region.

Because our selection technique uses infrared excess as a requirement, our sample is strongly biased against inclusion of Class III YSOs. The distribution of IRAC spectral slopes for our YSOs indicates that most of these objects are Class II, with a peak toward steeper spectral slopes but a substantial contribution from a tail of Flat spectrum and Class I type objects. By studying the small fraction of the sample that is optically visible, we infer a typical age of a few Myr for the low-mass population.