Description
We report on the results of an approximately 90ks Chandra observation of a complex region that hosts multiple sites of recent and active star formation in ARA OB1a. The field is centered on the embedded cluster RCW 108-IR and includes a large portion of the open cluster NGC 6193. We detect over 420 X-ray sources in the field and combined these data with deep near-IR, Spitzer/IRAC and Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) mid-IR data. We find about 360 of the X-ray sources have near-IR counterparts. We divide the region into five parts based on the X-ray point source characteristics and extended 8um emission. The most clearly defined regions are the central region, identified by embedded sources with high luminosities in both the near-IR and X-ray as well as high X-ray temperatures (~3keV), and the eastern region, identified by low extinction and ~1keV X-ray temperatures. The cluster members range in X-ray luminosity from 10^29^ to 10^33^erg/s. Over 18% of the cluster members with over 100 counts exhibit flares. All sources with over 350 counts are variable. Overall about 10% (16% in RCW 108-IR) appear to have optically thick disks as derived from their position in the (J-H), (H-K) diagram. The disk fraction becomes much higher when IRAC data are employed. We fit the bulk of the X-ray spectra as absorbed Raymond-Smith-type plasmas, and find that the column to the RCW 108-IR members varies from 10^21^ to 10^23^cm^-2^. We find that the field contains 41 candidate O or B stars, and estimate that the total number of pre-main-sequence stars in the field is about 1600+/-200.
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