A NEAR-INFRARED SURVEY OF THE TAURUS MOLECULAR CLOUD - NEAR-INFRARED LUMINOSITY FUNCTION

We have carried out a near-infrared survey of the central 1 degrees x 1 degrees region of Heiles cloud 2 (HC2), one of the densest regions o f the Taurus molecular cloud. The limiting magnitude of this survey wa s 13.4 mag, and we have detected 831 sources at K. Based on the color- color diagram, 47 sources were classified as class II objects, and thr ee as class I objects. The differential luminosity function of the cla ss II objects in HC2 does not appear to have any cutoff, in agreement with the result by Comeron et al. for the rho Ophiuchi cloud. The majo rity of the sources are low-luminosity class II objects. Either these are very low mass class II objects with about 1/10 solar mass or the d issipation timescale of the circumstellar disk is longer than that of typical visible class II objects.