Related papers: The lost siblings of the Sun
Efforts to unveil the structure of the local interstellar medium and its recent star formation history have spanned the past seventy years. Recent studies utilizing precise data from space astrometry missions have revealed nearby, newly…
The Solar system was once rich in the short-lived radionuclide (SLR) $^{26}$Al\, but deprived in $^{60}$Fe. Several models have been proposed to explain these anomalous abundances in SLRs, but none has been set within a self-consistent…
We propose a kinematic approach to searching for the stars that could be formed with the Sun in a common "parent" open cluster. The approach consists in preselecting suitable candidates by the closeness of their space velocities to the…
An attempt is made, probably for the first time, to understand the origin of the solar system in context with the evolution of the galaxy as a natural consequence of the birth of several generations of stellar clusters. The galaxy is…
For decades we have known that the Sun lies within the Local Bubble, a cavity of low-density, high-temperature plasma surrounded by a shell of cold, neutral gas and dust. However, the precise shape and extent of this shell, the impetus and…
We present a catalog of near-infrared surveys of young (<= a few 10^6 yr) stellar groups and clusters within 1 kpc from the Sun, based on an extensive search of the literature from the past ten years. We find 143 surveys from 69 published…
We examine the possibility that very massive stars greatly exceeding the commonly adopted stellar mass limit of 150 Msun may be present in young star clusters in the local universe. We identify ten candidate clusters, some of which may host…
Little is known about the origins of the giant star clusters known as globular clusters. How can hundreds of thousands of stars form simultaneously in a volume only a few light years across the distance of the sun to its nearest neighbor?…
Most stars and their planets form in open clusters. Over 95 per cent of such clusters have stellar densities too low (less than a hundred stars per cubic parsec) to withstand internal and external dynamical stresses and fall apart within a…
Astrophysical evidence suggests that the Sun was born near 5 kpc from the Galactic center, within the corotation radius of the Galactic bar, around 6-7 kpc. This presents challenges for outward migration due to the Jacobi energy constraint,…
The Sun is thought to be formed within a star cluster. The coexistence of $^{26}{\rm Al}$-rich and $^{26}{\rm Al}$-poor calcium--aluminum-rich inclusions indicates that a direct injection of $^{26}{\rm Al}$-rich materials from a nearby…
Dynamical information along with survey data on metallicity and in some cases age have been used recently by some authors to search for candidates of stars that were born in the cluster where the Sun formed. We have acquired high…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
Star clusters are often used as tracers of major star formation events in external galaxies as they can be studied up to much larger distances than individual stars. It is vital to understand their evolution if they are used to derive, for…
Star clusters are formed in molecular clouds which are believed to be the birth places of most stars. From recent observational data, Lada & Lada 2003 estimated that only 4% to 7% of the clusters embedded inside molecular clouds have…
The birthrate of stars of masses > 10 solar masses is estimated from a sample of just over 400 O3-B2 dwarfs within 1.5 kpc of the Sun and the result extrapolated to estimate the galactic supernova rate contributed by such stars. The…
We investigate the possibility that the Sun could have been born in M67 by carrying out $N$-body simulations of M67-like clusters in a time-varying Galactic environment, and following the galactic orbits of stars that escape from them. We…
The mass and chemical composition of a star are the primary determinants of its basic physical properties--radius, temperature, luminosity--and how those properties evolve with time. Thus, two stars born at the same time, from the same…
The discovery of Sedna places new constraints on the origin and evolution of our solar system. Here we investigate the possibility that a close encounter with another star produced the observed edge of the Kuiper belt, at roughly 50 AU, and…
We have computed trajectories, distances and times of closest approaches to the Sun by stars in the Solar neighbourhood with known position, radial velocity and proper motions. For this purpose we have used a full potential model of the…