[ITAL]HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE[/ITAL][ITAL]Hubble Space Telescope[/ITAL] NICMOS Detection of a Partially Embedded, Intermediate-Mass, Pre–Main-Sequence Population in the 30 Doradus Nebula

We present the detection of an intermediate-mass pre-main-sequence populationembedded in the nebular filaments surrounding the 30 Doradus region in theLarge Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using HST/NICMOS. In addition to four previouslyknown luminous Class I infrared ``protostars,'' the NICMOS data reveal 20 newsources with intrinsic infrared excess similar to Galactic pre-main sequencestars. Based on their infrared brightness, these objects can be identified asthe LMC equivalent of Galactic pre-main sequence stars. The faintest LMC YoungStellar Objects in the sample have colors similar to T Tauri and have about thesame brightness as T Tauri if placed at the distance of the LMC. We find noevidence for a lower-mass cut-off in the initial mass function. Instead, thewhole spectrum of stellar masses from pre-main sequence stars with ~1.5Mo tomassive O stars still embedded in dense knots appears to be present in thenebular filaments. The majority of the young stellar objects can be found tothe north of the central starburst cluster R136. This region is very likelyevolving into an OB association.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, uses emulateapj.sty and psfig.sty. accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal (August 2001 issue