English

The lost siblings of the Sun

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2011-02-11 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

The anomalous chemical abundances and the structure of the Edgewood-Kuiper belt observed in the solar system constrain the initial mass and radius of the star cluster in which the sun was born to M500M\simeq500 to 3000 \msun and R1R\simeq 1 to 3 pc. When the cluster dissolved the siblings of the sun dispersed through the galaxy, but they remained on a similar orbit around the Galactic center. Today these stars hide among the field stars, but 10 to 60 of them are still present within a distance of 100\sim 100 pc. These siblings of the sun can be identified by accurate measurements of their chemical abundances, positions and their velocities. Finding even a few will strongly constrain the parameters of the parental star cluster and the location in the Galaxy where we were born.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0903.0237,
  title  = {The lost siblings of the Sun},
  author = {S. Portegies Zwart},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.0237},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

Submitted to ApJ Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:17:13.058Z