English

Is T Tauri North a 'Classical' T Tauri star?

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2020-08-05 v1

Abstract

We present high-resolution HH- and KK-band spectroscopic observations of the archetypal T Tauri star T Tau North. Synthetic spectral modeling is used to derive the KK-band temperature, surface gravity, magnetic field strength, and rotational velocity for this star. The KK-band spectroscopic temperature measured is TK-band=3976±90K\rm T_{K\text{-band}} = 3976 \pm 90 K, which is 1000K\sim 1000 \, \rm K cooler than the temperature measured from optical observations. Our KK-band temperature measurement for T Tau N is confirmed using equivalent width line ratio vs. temperature relations in the HH-band, from which a TH-band=4085±155K\rm T_{H\text{-band}} = 4085 \pm 155 K is derived. This optical vs. IR temperature difference is interpreted as cool or hot spots, or both, covering a significant part of the surface of T Tau N. The gravity derived for T Tau N logg=3.45±0.14\log{g}=3.45 \pm 0.14 is lower than the gravity of nearly every other star in a sample of 24 classical T Tauri stars in Taurus. Combining these temperature and gravity results with magnetic stellar evolutionary models, we find the age of T Tau N to be less than 1 Myr old. These results suggest that T Tau N is in an earlier evolutionary stage than most classical T Tauri stars in Taurus, arguing that it is a protostar ejected from the embedded southern binary system shortly after its formation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.10139,
  title  = {Is T Tauri North a 'Classical' T Tauri star?},
  author = {Christian Flores and Bo Reipurth and Michael S. Connelley},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.10139},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

18 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:24:57.732Z