Near infrared imaging of NGC 2316

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, CfA, U.S.A.e-mail:clada@cfa.harvard.eduAbstract. In the present paper we present JHK photometric results of the young embedded cluster NGC2316. We constructthe cluster radial profile from which we determine a radius of 0.63pc. We find 189 ±29 cluster members in an extinctionlimited sub-sample of the survey, 22±19 of which are possibly substellar. An average extinction of 4.5 visual magnitudes isderived using (H − K) colours of control fields. This extinction is due to the pres ence of residual parental molecular cloud.NGC2316 presents 16% source fraction of excess emission which is consistent with other results from clusters with an age of 2– 3Myr. This age is consistent with the distribution of sources in the colour-magnitude diagram when compared to theoreticalisochrones, and the overall shape of the cluster KLF. The substellar population of the cluster is similar or smaller than thatobserved for other embedded clusters and the stellar objects dominate the cluster membership.Key words. Stars:Formation – Stars:low-mass,brown dwarfs – Stars:planetary systems:protoplanetary disks – Stars:luminosityfunction – Infrared:Stars – ISM:Individual objects (NGC23 16)