Investigating the Impact of Metallicity on Star Formation in the Outer Galaxy. I. VLT/KMOS Survey of Young Stellar Objects in Canis Major

Abstract

Abstract The effects of metallicity on the evolution of protoplanetary disks may be studied in the outer Galaxy where the metallicity is lower than in the solar neighborhood. We present the VLT/KMOS integral field spectroscopy in the near-infrared of ∼120 candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) in the CMa-ℓ224 star-forming region located at a Galactocentric distance of 9.1 kpc. We characterize the YSO accretion luminosities and accretion rates using the hydrogen Brγ emission and find a median accretion luminosity of log ( L acc ) = − 0.82 − 0.82 + 0.80 L ⊙ . Based on the measured accretion luminosities, we investigate the hypothesis of star formation history in the CMa-ℓ224. Their median values suggest that Cluster C, where most of YSO candidates have been identified, might be the most evolved part of the region. The accretion luminosities are similar to those observed toward low-mass YSOs in the Perseus and Orion molecular clouds, and they do not reveal the impact of lower metallicity. Similar studies in other outer Galaxy clouds covering a wide range of metallicities are critical to gain a complete picture of star formation in the Galaxy.