Hunting Coreshine with (Warm) Spitzer: From Grain Growth to Planet Formation

Abstract

“Hunting Coreshine with Spitzer” (P.I. R. Paladini) is the largest (165.5 h) approved Cycle-8 Warm Spitzer Mission proposal in the Galactic science category. The goal of the survey is an unbiased investigation of the coreshine effect, which is thought to provide direct evidence for grain growth in cold, dense environments. The survey has now been fully executed: 90 sources, selected from the Planck Early Cold Cores Catalog, have been observed with IRAC at 3.6 and 4.5 μm using long (i.e. deep) exposures. Here we present the rationale of the survey.