# # Program information file # PROGRAM_ID 2023B037 PROGRAM_TITLE Spectroscopic follow-up of new young eruptive star candidates found with Gaia PROGRAM_INV1 Agnes Kospal PROGRAM_INV2 Peter Abraham PROGRAM_INV3 Fernando Cruz-Saenz de Miera PROGRAM_INV4 PROGRAM_INV5 PROGRAM_SCICAT stellar PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_BEG Young eruptive stars are young stellar objects experiencing large photometric outbursts due to highly enhanced accretion from the circumstellar disk onto the star. These episodic outbursts can have significant implications for the evolution of the protostars, their circumstellar disks, including the forming planets, and their surroundings. There are <50 objects known among their two main classes: EXors and FUors. The Gaia space observatory has provided unprecedented capabilities to search for these objects via its Gaia Photometric Science Alerts program. Here we propose to use IRTF/SpeX to obtain the first infrared spectra of five selected Gaia alerts that our preliminary analysis identified as candidates young eruptive stars. Our main goal is to confirm if our targets are eruptive young stars, determine to which class they belong, and study their accretion as well as stellar and disk properties. PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_END