Star formation in the “Gulf of Mexico”

¹ SOAR Telescope, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile
e-mail: tarmond@ctio.noao.edu
² Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 640 N. Aohoku Place, Hilo, HI 96720, USA
e-mail: reipurth@ifa.hawaii.edu; caa@ifa.hawaii.edu
³ Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
e-mail: john.bally@colorado.edu

Received: 9 June 2009
Accepted: 6 February 2011

Abstract

We present an optical/infrared study of the dense molecular cloud, L935, dubbed “The Gulf of Mexico”, which separates the North America and the Pelican nebulae, and we demonstrate that this area is a very active star forming region. A wide-field imaging study with interference filters has revealed 35 new Herbig-Haro objects in the Gulf of Mexico. A grism survey has identified 41 Hα emission-line stars, 30 of them new. A small cluster of partly embedded pre-main sequence stars is located around the known LkHα 185-189 group of stars, which includes the recently erupting FUor HBC 722.