Jan Forbrich, Charles J. Lada, August A. Muench
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Marco Lombardi
European Southern Observatory
Joao Alves
Calar Alto Observatory
Results of a Spitzer Space Telescope survey of the Pipe Dark Nebula is reported. Thirteen square degrees of sky encompassing the entire molecular cloud are searched with high sensitivity for candidate YSOs. Only 18 candidates are identified within the entire molecular cloud and tweleve of these are previously known members of a small cluster associated with Barnard 59, the largest and most massive dense core in the cloud. These findings emphatically confirm the notion of an extremely low level of star formation activity in the Pipe Nebula. The star formation efficiency for the entire cloud mass is only ~ 0.06%.
in The Astrophysical Journal, October 2009, in press.
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