2008AJ....136.1427V

We investigate the physical conditions of the interstellar medium and stellar components in the regions of the southern Galactic star-forming complexes associated with IRAS 10049-5657 and IRAS 10031-5632. These regions have been mapped simultaneously in two far-infrared bands (λ_eff∼ 150 and 210 µm), with ∼1' angular resolution using the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research 1 m balloon-borne telescope. Spatial distribution of the temperature of cool dust and optical depth at 200 µm have been obtained taking advantage of the similar beams in the two bands. The HIRES processed Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) maps at 12, 25, 60, and 100 µm have been used for comparison. Using the Two Micron All Sky Survey near-infrared sources, we find the stellar populations of the embedded young clusters. A rich cluster of OB stars is seen in the IRAS 10049-5657 region. The fits to the stellar density radial profile of the cluster associated with IRAS 10049-5657 have been explored with the inverse radius profile as well as the King's profile; the cluster radius is ∼2 pc. The source in the cluster closest to the IRAS peak is IRA-7, which lies above the zero-age main-sequence curve of spectral type O5 in the color-magnitude diagram. Unlike IRAS 10049-5657, a small cluster comprising a few deeply embedded sources is seen at the location of IRAS 10031-5632. Self-consistent radiative transfer modeling aimed at extracting important physical and geometrical details of the two IRAS sources shows that the best-fit models are in good agreement with the observed spectral energy distributions. The geometric details of the associated cloud and optical depths (τ₁₀₀) have been estimated. A uniform density distribution of dust and gas is implied for both the sources. In addition, the infrared ionic fine-structure line emission from gas has been modeled for both the regions and compared with data from the IRAS low-resolution spectrometer. For IRAS 10049-5657, the observed and modeled luminosities for most lines agree within a factor of 4 while for IRAS 10031-5632 we find a discrepancy of a factor of 100 and it is likely that some basic assumptions of the model are not valid in this case.