Fluxes & physical param. of blended YSOs

A related question is whether the initial mass function (IMF) is in fact universal across galactic environments, or whether it is an average of IMFs that differ, for example, in massive versus low-mass molecular clouds. One of the long-standing problems in resolving these questions and in the study of young clusters is observational: how to accurately combine multiwavelength data sets obtained using telescopes with different spatial resolutions.

The resulting confusion hinders our ability to fully characterize clustered star formation. Here we present a new method that uses Bayesian inference to fit the blended spectral energy distributions and images of individual young stellar objects (YSOs) in confused clusters. We apply this method to the infrared photometry of a sample comprising 70 Spitzer-selected, low-mass (M_cl_<100M_{sun}_) young clusters in the galactic plane, and we use the derived physical parameters to investigate how the distribution of YSO masses within each cluster relates to the total mass of the cluster.