Characterizing the nature of embedded young stellar objects through silicate, ice and millimeter observations

Context. Determining the evolutionary stage of a Young Stellar Object (YSO) is of fundamental importance to test star formation theories. Classification schemes for YSOs are based on evaluating the degree of dissipation of the surrounding envelope, whose main effects are the extinction of the optical radiation from the central YSO and re-emission in the far-infrared to millimeter part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Since extinction is a property of column density along the line of sight, the presence of a protoplanetary disk may lead to a misclassification of pre-main sequence stars with disks when viewed edge-on.