An HST Imaging Survey of Low-Mass Stars in the Chamaeleon I Star Forming
  region
  We present new HST/WFPC2 observations of 20 fields centered around T Tauri
stars in the Chamaeleon I star forming region. Images have been obtained in the
F631N ([OI]6300A), F656N (Ha) and F673N ([SII]6716A+6731A) narrow-band filters,
plus the Johnson V-band equivalent F547M filter. We detect 31 T Tauri stars
falling within our fields. We discuss the optical morphology of 10 sources
showing evidence of either binarity, circumstellar material, or mass loss. We
supplement our photometry with a compilation of optical, infrared and
sub-millimeter data from the literature, together with new sub-mm data for
three objects, to build the Spectral Energy Distributions (SED) of 19 single
sources. Using an SED model fitting tool, we self-consistently estimate a
number of stellar and disk parameters, while mass accretion rates are directly
derived from our Ha photometry. We find that bolometric luminosities derived
from dereddened optical data tend to be underestimated in systems with high
alpha(2-24} IR spectral index, suggesting that disks seen nearly edge-on may
occasionally be interpreted as low luminosity (and therefore more evolved)
sources. On the other hand, the same alpha(2-24) spectral index, a tracer of
the amount of dust in the warmer layers of the circumstellar disks, and the
mass accretion rate appear to decay with the isocronal stellar age, suggesting
that the observed age spread (~0.5-5 Myr) within the cluster is real. Our
sample contains a few outliers that may have dissipated their circumstellar
disks on shorter time-scale.
