Stars in the earliest phases of their formation, i.e., those accreting the main component of their final mass, are deeply embedded within dense cores of dust and molecular material. Because of the high line-of-sight extinction and the large amount of circumstellar material, stellar emission is reprocessed by dust into long wavelength radiation, typically in the far-infrared and sub-millimeter bands. Consequently, the youngest sources are strong submillimeter continuum sources, and often undetectable as point sources in the near-infrared and optical. The most deeply embedded of these sources have been labelled “Class 0” sources by André, Ward-Thompson, & Barsony (1994), in an extension of the spectral energy distribution classification scheme first proposed by Adams, Lada, & Shu (1987).
Accretion and Outflow Activity in the Earliest Phases of Star-Formation: CO, Sub-mm Continuum, and Near-Infrared Observations