Description
Spitzer IRAC and MIPS images of the Trifid Nebula (M20) reveal its spectacular appearance in infrared light, highlighting the nebula's special evolutionary stage. The images feature recently formed massive protostars and numerous young stellar objects, and a single O star that illuminates the surrounding molecular cloud from which it formed, and unveil large-scale, filamentary dark clouds. Multiple protostars are detected in the infrared, within the cold dust cores of TC3 and TC4, which were previously defined as Class 0. The cold dust continuum cores of TC1 and TC2 contain only one protostar each. The Spitzer color-color diagram allowed us to identify 160 young stellar objects (YSOs) and classify them into different evolutionary stages. The diagram also revealed a unique group of YSOs that are bright at 24um but have the spectral energy distribution peaking at 58um.
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