Description
A new, unbiased Spitzer MIPS imaging survey (~1.8deg^2^) of the young stellar content of the Vela Molecular Ridge-D (VMR-D) is presented. The survey is complete down to 5 and 250mJy at 24 and 70{mu}m, respectively. A total of 849 sources are detected at 24{mu}m, and 52 of them also have a 70{mu}m counterpart. The VMR-D region is one that we have already partially mapped in dust and gas millimeter emission, and we discuss the correlation between the Spitzer compact sources and the millimeter contours. About half of the 24{mu}m sources are located inside the region delimited by the ^12^CO(1-0) contours, corresponding to only one-third of the full area mapped with MIPS. Therefore, the 24{mu}m source density increases by about 100% moving from outside to inside the CO contours. For the 70{mu}m sources, the corresponding density increase is a factor of 4. About 400 sources of these have a 2MASS counterpart, and we have used this to construct a Ks versus Ks-[24] diagram and to identify the protostellar population inside the cloud.
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