VCNS II. The IR-excess-selected population

2015

We performed a deep wide-field (6.76 square-degrees) near-infrared survey with the VISTA telescope that covers the entire extent of the Carina nebula complex. Complementing the VISTA near-infrared catalog with Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared photometry improves the situation of the background contamination considerably. We find that a (J-H) versus (Ks-[4.5]) color-color diagram is well suited to tracing the population of YSO-candidates (cYSOs) by their infrared excess. We identify 8781 sources with strong infrared excess, which we consider as cYSOs. This sample is used to investigate the spatial distribution of the cYSOs with a nearest-neighbor analysis. The surface density distribution of cYSOs …