A Survey of Circumstellar Structure around Young Low Mass Stars

We present results from a near-infrared array, CO interferometer, and H2O maser interferometer survey of the circumstellar environments of 26 young low-luminosity embedded stars located in nearby molecular clouds. About 75% of the sample show evidence for stellar winds/outflows in the near-infrared or CO data indicating that most of these sources are in the early wind clearing phase of their evolution. Close to 15% are multiple on the scale of 20”, suggesting that fragmentation of their surrounding dense cloud cores is important before or during gravitational collapse. Roughly 10% have H2O maser emission and the kinematics imply the masers arise in gravitation ally unbound gas (i.e., a stellar wind or outflow) rather than in a circumstellar disk.