SFiNCs: X-Ray and Infrared Catalog of Young Stars in 22 Nearby Clouds

A catalog of over 15,300 X-ray and over 1,630,000 mid-infrared point sources from the Star Formation in Nearby Clouds project. The data, produced by NASA, combines Chandra X-ray and Spitzer infrared archival observations from 2000 to 2015 to study young stellar populations. It identifies nearly 8,500 probable young stellar members across 22 nearby star-forming regions.

Use Cases

• Identify and classify young stellar objects based on combined X-ray and infrared properties.
• Study spatial distributions and clustering of young stars within 22 nearby star-forming regions.
• Compare young stellar populations to those in more distant, richer clusters like the MYStIX survey.
• Analyze photometric properties of stars using infrared measurements in the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 µm bands.

Strengths

• Large scale with over 15,300 X-ray sources and over 1.6 million infrared sources.
• Homogeneous analysis applied across 65 Chandra observations and 423 Spitzer data sets.
• Increases the census of young stellar object members by 40% for the merged sample of all 22 regions.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the final member table is not specified in the provided metadata.
• Infrared photometry is not complete for all bands (available for 29% and 23% of sources in the 5.8 and 8.0 µm bands).

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Homogeneous re-analysis of archival Chandra X-ray and Spitzer mid-infrared data.

Time Range

Observations spanning from 2000 January to 2015 April.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 19:16:55.438429; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Observations of 22 nearby star-forming regions in the sky.