B- and A-Type Stars in the Taurus-Auriga Star Forming Region

Abstract

We describe the results of a search for early-type stars associated with the Taurus-Auriga molecular cloud complex, a diffuse nearby star-forming region noted as lacking young stars of intermediate and high mass. We investigate several sets of possible O, B and early A spectral class members. The first is a group of stars for which mid-infrared images show bright nebulae, all of which can be associated with stars of spectral type B. The second group consists of early-type stars compiled from (i) literature listings in SIMBAD; (ii) B stars with infrared excesses selected from the Spitzer Space Telescope survey of the Taurus cloud; (iii) magnitude- and color-selected point sources from the 2MASS; and (iv) spectroscopically identified early-type stars from the SDSS coverage of the Taurus region. We evaluated stars for membership in the Taurus-Auriga star formation region based on criteria involving: spectroscopic and parallactic distances, proper motions and radial velocities, and infrared excesses or line emission indicative of stellar youth. For selected objects, we also model the scattered and emitted radiation from reflection nebulosity and compare the results with the observed spectral energy distributions to further test the plausibility of physical association of the B stars with the Taurus cloud. This investigation newly identifies as probable Taurus members three B-type stars: HR 1445 (HD 28929), tau Tau (HD 29763), 72 Tau (HD 28149), and two A-type stars: HD 31305 and HD 26212, thus doubling the number of stars A5 or earlier associated with the Taurus clouds. Several additional early-type sources including HD 29659 and HD 283815 meet some, but not all, of the membership criteria and therefore are plausible, though not secure, members.

31 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (9)

• Herschel view of the Taurus B211/3 filament and striations: Evidence of filamentary growth?
• The Stellar Populations of Praesepe and Coma Berenices
• VLBA determination of the distance to nearby star-forming regions I. The distance to T Tauri with 0.4% accuracy
• The Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory CO Mapping Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• Spitzer IRS Spectra and Envelope Models of Class I Protostars in Taurus
• Molecular Outflows Identified in the FCRAO CO Survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• Discovery of a Circumbinary Disk around Herbig Ae/Be system v892 Tau
• A method to determine distances to molecular clouds using near-IR photometry
• Precise High-Cadence Time Series of Five Variable Young Stars in Auriga with MOST

Cited by in corpus (29)

• BANYAN. XI. The BANYAN $\Sigma$ multivariate Bayesian algorithm to identify members of young associations within 150 pc
• An Optical Spectroscopic Study of T Tauri Stars. I. Photospheric Properties
• Chains of dense cores in the Taurus L1495/B213 complex
• An all-sky Support Vector Machine selection of WISE YSO Candidates
• A Survey for New Members of the Taurus Star-Forming Region with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Gaia EDR3 Reveals the Substructure and Complicated Star Formation History of the Greater Taurus-Auriga Star Forming Complex
• The Greater Taurus-Auriga Ecosystem I: There Is A Distributed Older Population
• A WISE Survey of Circumstellar Disks in Taurus
• The (w)hole survey: an unbiased sample study of transition disk candidates based on Spitzer catalogs
• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon in Protoplanetary Disks around Herbig Ae/Be and T Tauri Stars
• The Per-Tau Shell: A Giant Star-Forming Spherical Shell Revealed by 3D Dust Observations
• A Census of the Taurus Star-forming Region and Neighboring Associations with Gaia
• The mass and size of Herbig disks as seen by ALMA
• The Many-Faceted Light Curves of Young Disk-bearing Stars in Taurus as Seen by K2
• Herbig Stars: A Quarter Century of Progress
• Reddening, Distance, and Stellar Content of the Young Open Cluster Westerlund 2
• Narrow Na and K Absorption Lines Toward T Tauri Stars - Tracing the Atomic Envelope of Molecular Clouds
• Dynamical star forming history of Per OB2
• Search for bright nearby M dwarfs with Virtual Observatory tools
• The Transition from Diffuse Molecular Gas to Molecular Cloud Material in Taurus
• Seismic modelling of the rotating, slowly pulsating B-type star HD 21071
• Dynamical timescale of precollapse evolution inferred from chemical distribution in the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 (TMC-1) filament
• Predicting the time variation of radio emission from MHD simulations of a flaring T-Tauri star
• A Study of Ro-vibrational OH Emission from Herbig Ae/Be Stars
• Possible progression of mass flow processes around young intermediate-mass stars based on high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy. I. Taurus
• Detecting planetary mass companions near the water frost-line using JWST interferometry
• Discovery of carbon monoxide emission from five debris disks around young A-type stars
• On the nature of the candidate T-Tauri star V501 Aurigae
• The Radiowave Hunt for Young Stellar Object Emission and Demographics (RADIOHEAD): A Radio Luminosity$-$Spectral Type Dependence in Taurus$-$Auriga YSOs