A revised estimate of the distance to the clouds in the Chamaeleon complex using the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution

Abstract

The determination of the distance to dark star-forming clouds is a key parameter to derive the properties of the cloud itself, and of its stellar content. This parameter is still loosely constrained even in nearby star-forming regions. We want to determine the distances to the clouds in the Chamaeleon-Musca complex and to explore the connection between these clouds and the large scale cloud structures in the galaxy. We use the newly estimated distances obtained from the parallaxes measured by the Gaia satellite and included in the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution catalog. When known members of a region are included in this catalog we use their parallaxes to infer the distance to the cloud. Otherwise, we analyze the dependence of the color excess on the distance of the stars and look for a turn-on of this excess, which is a proxy of the position of the front-edge of the star-forming cloud. We are able to measure the distance to the three Chamaeleon clouds. The distance to Chamaeleon I is 179 pc, 20 pc further away than previously assumed. The Chamaeleon II cloud is located at the distance of 181 pc, which agrees with previous estimates. We are able to measure for the first time a distance to the Chamaeleon III cloud of 199 pc. Finally, the distance of the Musca cloud is smaller than 603 pc. These estimates do not allow us to distinguish between the possibility that the Chamaeleon clouds are part of a sheet of clouds parallel to the galactic plane, or perpendicular to it. Gaia Data Release 2 will allow us to put more stringent constraints on the distances to these clouds by giving us access to parallax measurements for a larger number of members of these regions.

Accepted for publication on A&A. Abstract shortened for arxiv constraints

References in corpus (12)

• The Gaia mission
• A grid of MARCS model atmospheres for late-type stars I. Methods and general properties
• Gaia Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties
• New evolutionary models for pre-main sequence and main sequence low-mass stars down to the hydrogen-burning limit
• Search for Associations Containing Young stars (SACY): I. Sample & Searching Method
• The Stellar Population of the Chamaeleon I Star-Forming Region
• X-Shooter study of accretion in Chamaeleon I: II. A steeper increase of accretion with stellar mass for very low mass stars?
• Automated derivation of stellar atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances: the MATISSE algorithm
• Estimating distances from parallaxes. III. Distances of two million stars in the Gaia DR1 catalogue
• The young population of the Chamaeleon II dark cloud
• New Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs with Disks in the Chamaeleon I Star-Forming Region
• Proper motions of young stars in Chamaeleon. I. A Virtual Observatory study of spectroscopically confirmed members

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Why do protoplanetary disks appear not massive enough to form the known exoplanet population?
• Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk). I. Overview of the Program and First Results
• Distances and Kinematics of Gould Belt Star-Forming Regions with Gaia DR2 results
• The Dynamics of Interstellar Asteroids and Comets within the Galaxy: an Assessment of Local Candidate Source Regions for 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov
• An initial overview of the extent and structure of recent star formation within the Serpens Molecular Cloud using Gaia Data Release 2
• Chamaeleon DANCe. Revisiting the stellar populations of Chamaeleon I and Chamaeleon II with Gaia-DR2 data
• The double population of Chamaeleon I detected by Gaia DR2
• VLTI/MIDI atlas of disks around low- and intermediate-mass young stellar objects
• First direct detection of a polarized companion outside of a resolved circumbinary disk around CS Cha
• What happened before? -- The disks around the precursors of young Herbig Ae/Be stars
• SRG/eROSITA X-ray shadowing study of giant molecular clouds
• An ALMA Survey of faint disks in the Chamaeleon I star-forming region: Why are some Class II disks so faint?
• Observing the gas component of circumplanetary disks around wide-orbit planet-mass companions in the (sub)mm regime
• Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk) V: Possible Annular Substructure in a Circumstellar Disk in the Ced110 IRS4 System
• The three-dimensional structure of Galactic molecular cloud complexes out to 2.5 kpc
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds in the southern sky
• ALMA observations of the early stages of substellar formation in the Lupus 1 and 3 molecular clouds
• Distortion of Magnetic Fields in BHR 71
• A Blueprint for the Milky Way's Stellar Populations. V. 3D Local Dust Extinction
• Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk). XI. A high-resolution view toward the BHR 71 Class 0 protostellar wide binary
• Searching for Wide Companions and Identifying Circum(sub)stellar Disks through PSF-Fitting of Spitzer/IRAC Archival Images
• An optimised survey strategy for the ERIS/NIX imager: searching for young giant exoplanets and very low mass brown dwarfs using the K-peak custom photometric filter
• Accretion onto young stars: the key to disk evolution
• Substellar candidates at the earliest stages: the SUCANES database