Spectroscopic Study of NGC 281 West
  NGC 281 is a complex region of star formation at 2.8 kpc. This complex is
situated 300 pc above the Galactic plane, and appears to be part of a 270 pc
diameter ring of atomic and molecular clouds expanding at 22 km/s (Megeath et
al. 2003). It appears that two modes of triggered star formation are at work
here: an initial supernova to trigger the ring complex and the initial O~stars
and the subsequent triggering of low mass star formation by photoevaporation
driven molecular core compression. To get a complete census of the young
stellar population, we use \textbf{observations from} Chandra ACIS 100 ksec
coupled with data from 2MASS and Spitzer. The Master X-ray catalog has 446
sources detected in different bandpasses. We present the spatial distribution
of Class~I, II and III sources to study the progress of star formation. We also
determine the gas to dust ratio $N_H/A_K$ to be 1.93 $\pm$ 0.47 $\times
10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$ mag$^{-1}$ for this region. \textbf{In this article, we
present NGC 281 as a good target to study with the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical
Telescope (DOT) in spectroscopy. With these spectra, we look for evidence for
the pre-main-sequence (PMS) nature of the objects, study the properties of the
detected emission lines as a function of evolutionary class, and obtain
spectral types for the observed young stellar objects (YSOs). The temperatures
implied by the spectral types can be combined with luminosities determined from
the near-infrared (NIR) photometry to construct Hertzsprung--Russell (HR)
diagrams for the clusters. By comparing the positions of the YSOs in the HR
diagrams with the PMS tracks, we can determine the ages of the embedded sources
and study the relative ages of the YSOs with and without optically thick
circumstellar disks.
