English

Runaway Young Stars in the Orion Nebula

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2019-10-16 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

The star forming region of the Orion Nebula (ONC) is ideal to study the stellar dynamics of young stars in a clustered environment. Using Gaia DR2 we search for the pre-main sequence stars with unusually high proper motions that may be representative of a dynamical ejection from unstable young triple systems or other close three-body encounters. We identify twenty-six candidate stars that are likely to have had such an encounter in the last 1 Myr. Nine of these stars could be traced back to the densest central-most region of the ONC, the Trapezium, while five others have likely interactions with other OB-type stars in the cluster. Seven stars originate from other nearby populations within the Orion Complex that coincidentally scattered towards the ONC. A definitive point of origin cannot be identified for the remaining sources. These observations shed light on the frequency of the ejection events in young clusters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.07550,
  title  = {Runaway Young Stars in the Orion Nebula},
  author = {Aidan McBride and Marina Kounkel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.07550},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Accepted to ApJ, 8 pages, 4 figures