The Not-So-Silent Suburbs of Star-Forming Regions

Most investigations of star-forming regions (SFRs) focus on their cores, where disks, jets, outflows and nebular clouds are commonplace. However, searches around the peripheries of stellar nurseries are almost non-existent, yet ought to contain additional young members, informing us about cloud dynamics and the dissolution of SFRs. “It’s a fishing trip” -- who’s going to offer that kind of observing time, right? Welcome to HYPERS*, a HST project which obtained 100 cycles of mostly optical photometry around the outskirts of SFRs by using the vacant second observing facility whilst the primary mission targeted a known nebulous region. Observations, completed in February 2022 consist of ~30 SFRs at distances 100-1000pc, size-scales 5-50 pc and populations of a few to a few thousand. Early results show: (1) dozens of emission disk candidates and a few potential jets; (2) many resolved multiple systems as close as ~0.05" that could not be detected without HST's powerful angular resolution; (3) large, previously unreported, cavities in the molecular clouds around the Eagle nebula. Our cross-match with several astronomical surveys indicates that we have lots of new stuff in there!