DEEP JHKs AND SPITZER IMAGING OF FOUR ISOLATED MOLECULAR CLOUD CORES

We present observations in eight wavebands from 1.25 to 24 mu m of four dense cores: L204C-2, L1152, L1155C-2, and L1228. Our goals are to study the young stellar object (YSO) population of these cores and to measure the mid-infrared extinction law. With our combined near-infrared and Spitzer photometry, we classify each source in the cores as, among other things, background stars, galaxies, or embedded YSOs. L1152 contains three YSOs and L1228 has seven, but neither L204C-2 nor L1155C-2 appear to contain any YSOs. We estimate an upper limit of 7 x 10(-5) to 5 x 10(-4) L-circle dot for any undiscovered YSOs in our cores. We also compute the line-of-sight extinction law toward each background star. These measurements are averaged spatially, to create chi(2) maps of the changes in the mid-infrared extinction law throughout our cores, and also in different ranges of extinction. From the chi(2) maps, we identify two small regions in L1152 and L1228 where the outflows in those cores appear to be destroying the larger dust grains, thus altering the extinction law in those regions. On average, however, our extinction law is relatively flat from 3.6 to 24 mu m for all ranges of extinction and in all four cores. From 3.6 to 8 mu m, this law is consistent with a dust model that includes larger dust grains than the diffuse interstellar medium, which suggests grain growth has occurred in our cores. At 24 mu m, our extinction law is two to four times higher than predicted by dust models. However, it is similar to other empirical measurements.