Young Stars and their Variability with LSST

Rosaria, Bonito, Patrick Hartigan, Laura Venuti, Mario Guarcello, Loredana Prisinzano, Costanza Argiroffi, Sergio Messina, Christopher Johns-Krull, Eric Feigelson, John Stauffer, Teresa Giannini, Simone Antoniucci, Salvo Sciortino, Giusi Micela, Ignazio Pillitteri, Davide Fedele, Linda Podio, Francesco Damiani, Peregrine McGehee, Rachel Street, John Gizis, Germano Sacco, Laura Magrini, Ettore Flaccomio, Salvatore Orlando, Marco Miceli, Beate Stelzer, Julien Fuchs, Sophia Chen, Sergey Pikuz, Antonio Frasca, Katia Biazzo, Claudio Codella, Andrea Pastorello, Juan Manuel Alcala', Elvira Covino, Eleonora Bianchi, Brunella Nisini

Published 2018-12-07Version 1

Young stars exhibit short-term photometric variability caused by mass accretion events from circumstellar disks, the presence of dusty warps within the inner disks, starspots that rotate across the stellar surfaces, and flares. Long-term variability also occurs owing to starspot longevity and cycles, and from changes in stellar angular momenta and activity as the stars age. We propose to observe the Carina star-forming region in different bands with a cadence of 30 minutes every night for one week per year to clarify the nature of both the short-term and long-term variability of the thousands of young stars in this region. By obtaining well-sampled multicolor lightcurves of this dense young cluster, LSST would acquire the first statistically significant data on how these objects vary on both short and long timescales. This information will allow us to relate the observed variability to stellar properties such as mass, age, binarity, and to environmental properties such as location within or exterior to the H II region, and to the presence or absence of a circumstellar disk.