1996A&A...315L.197W

We report the detection of pure rotational lines of H₂observed in the direction of three young stellar objects in the BD+40 4124 group, with the short-wavelength spectrometer (SWS) on board ISO. The rotational population distributions of all three stars are consistent with a thermal distribution. The derived kinetic temperatures are ≃500K for BD+40 4124 and LkHα 224 and ≃800K for LkHα 225. The amounts of molecular hydrogen detected are 0.01 to 0.04 M_☉. The relative abundances of ortho- and para-hydrogen are consistent with a high temperature equilibrium distribution. We conclude that the molecular hydrogen emission in all three regions appears to lie behind approximately 10-25mag of visual extinction and is probably not directly associated with any of the optical sources.