An optical study of the high mass star forming region RCW 34

Thesis (MSc (Space Physics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013This study consisted of an optical photometric and spectroscopic analysis on a 7′ 7′ field around the Southern high mass star forming region RCW 34. A previous study on RCW 34 in the NIR discov- ered many deeply embedded young stellar objects which were suspected to be T Tauri stars and which justified further investigation. The data used in this study consisted of three sets, the first two are photometric and spectroscopic data sets which were obtained during the first two weeks of February 2002. A third data set of spectroscopic observations was obtained by the author during the second week of 2011 of selected candidates using results from the NIR study and from the photometric data sets. All of the spectroscopy was conducted with the long slit spectrograph on the 1.9-m telescope and the photometry with DANDICAM on the 1.0-m telescope at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Sutherland. Objectives accomplished in the course of this study were to understand, ob- tain, reduce and interpret photometric and long slit spectroscopic CCD images. From the photometric results 57 stars showed excess blue emission on a colour-colour diagram which could be generated by circumstellar matter. The spectroscopic study showed 5 stars that showed H emission and 2 with strong Li absorption lines which confirm the suspicions of the NIR study about T Tauri stars in the region. All of the stars from the spectroscopic study in 2011 were identified as low-mass K or M type stars. Using colour-magnitude diagrams it was possible to see that the majority of the stars in the cluster are low-mass pre-main sequence stars. The stars matching between the optical and NIR filters were plotted on NIR colour-colour diagrams showing that the 5 stars that had H emission lines also had NIR colours characteristic to T Tauri stars. Out of the 5 stars that showed H emission, 2 were found to be classical T Tauris and three were found to be weak line T Tauris.Master