The Stellar "Snake"-V: the census within 3 kpc in the Solar Neighborhood
Abstract
We present a Gaia DR3 source-level census of \emph{Stellar Snake} complexes within 3\,kpc of the Sun. We define a Stellar Snake as a mutually coherent association of two or more stellar overdensities, characterised by consistent positions, kinematics, orbital invariants, ages, and chemical properties, rather than as a single gravitationally bound object. Moving beyond catalogue-driven searches seeded by known open clusters, our framework operates directly on individual Gaia sources to recover extended, low-density substructures and interconnecting stellar bridges. The multi-stage pipeline extracts statistically significant, non-overlapping base nodes, infers homogeneous parameters using a PointNet point-cloud regressor, and links these nodes into large-scale macro-structures across a 9D space spanning positions, tangential velocities, radial velocity, age , and orbital integrals . After FoF-topology cross-validation and boundary resolution, the final catalogue contains 1,256 Stellar Snake candidates comprising 802,489 unique member-star entries in 5,491 final base nodes selected from a 9,909-node input pool. Derived parameters are validated against external open-cluster catalogues and spectroscopic benchmarks. To quantify structural coherence, we introduce a graph-relation Snake Reliability Index (SRI), coupled with a peripheral-branch diagnostic and Gold/Silver/Bronze quality flags. At the population level, the census shows a broad age--metallicity pattern, a declining upper envelope of member-star entries toward older ages, and a projected association between young Snake nodes, nearby spiral-arm loci, and the Radcliffe Wave. This homogeneous inventory provides an observational foundation for probing the formation, coherence, and dynamical evolution of hierarchical stellar complexes in the Milky Way.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.00098,
title = {The Stellar "Snake"-V: the census within 3 kpc in the Solar Neighborhood},
author = {Xiang-Ming Yang and Ju-Yong Zhang and Hai-Jun Tian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.00098},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
35 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Comments and collaboration are welcome. The Snake Serials: https://astrotian.github.io/snake. The visualization: https://astrotian.github.io/snake/visualization