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The Initial Mass Functions of Four Embedded Stellar Clusters

A. Leistra, A. Cotera, J. Liebert

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0601083

Abstract

We present near-infrared J, H, and K images of four embedded stellar clusters in the Galaxy. We find a significant fraction of pre-main-sequence stars present in at least one of the clusters. For the clusters dominated by main-sequence stars, we determine the initial mass function (IMF) both by using the K luminosity function and a global extinction correction and by deriving individual extinction corrections for each star based on their placement in the K vs. H-K color-magnitude diagram. Based on our IMFs we find a significant discrepancy between the mean IMF derived via the different methods, suggesting that taking individual extinctions into account is necessary to correctly derive the IMF for an embedded cluster.

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