Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood -- V. Discovery of coronae of nearby star clusters

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel view on the morphology and the dynamical state of 10 prominent, nearby ($\le$ 500 pc), and young ($\sim$30-300 Myr) open star clusters with Gaia DR2: $\alpha$Per, Blanco 1, IC 2602, IC 2391, Messier 39, NGC 2451A, NGC 2516, NGC 2547, Platais 9, and the Pleiades. We introduce a pioneering member identification method that is informed by cluster bulk velocities and deconvolves the spatial distribution with a mixture of Gaussians. Our approach enables inferring the clusters' true spatial distribution by effectively filtering field star contaminants while at the same time mitigating the impact of positional errors along the line of sight. This first application of the method reveals the existence of vast stellar coronae, extending for $\gtrsim$100 pc and surrounding the, by comparison tiny and compact, cluster cores. The coronae and cores form intertwined, co-eval, and co-moving extended cluster populations, each encompassing tens of thousands of cubic parsec and stretching across tens of degrees on the sky. Our analysis shows that the coronae are gravitationally unbound but largely comprise the bulk of the populations' stellar mass. Most systems are in a highly dynamic state, showing evidence of expansion and sometimes simultaneous contraction along different spatial axes. The velocity field of the extended populations for the cluster cores appears asymmetric but is aligned along a spatial axis unique to each cluster. The overall spatial distribution and the kinematic signature of the populations are largely consistent with the differential rotation pattern of the Milky Way. This finding underlines the important role of global Galactic dynamics to the fate of stellar systems. Our results highlight the complexity of the Milky Way's open cluster population and call for a new perspective on the characterization and dynamical state of open clusters.

arXiv commentpublished in Astronomy & Astrophysics (update 23.07.21: fixed citation)

References in corpus (98)

• Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The Gaia mission
• PARSEC: stellar tracks and isochrones with the PAdova and TRieste Stellar Evolution Code
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• Embedded Clusters in Molecular Clouds
• Intrinsic Colors, Temperatures, and Bolometric Corrections of Pre-Main Sequence Stars
• The SIMBAD astronomical database
• Gaia Data Release 2: The astrometric solution
• Local Kinematics and the Local Standard of Rest
• The VizieR database of Astronomical Catalogues
• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• The Proper Motion of Sgr A*: II. The Mass of Sgr A*
• Gaia Data Release 2: Photometric content and validation
• Global survey of star clusters in the Milky Way II. The catalogue of basic parameters
• A Gaia DR2 view of the Open Cluster population in the Milky Way
• Star Clusters Across Cosmic Time
• Astrophysical parameters of Galactic open clusters
• Gaia Data Release 2: Catalogue validation
• Parallaxes and proper motions for 20 open clusters as based on the new Hipparcos catalogue
• Estimating distances from parallaxes
• Keck Spectra of Pleiades Brown Dwarf Candidates and a Precise Determination of the Lithium Depletion Edge in the Pleiades
• Vertical waves in the solar neighbourhood in Gaia DR2
• Spitzer Observations of NGC 1333: A Study of Structure and Evolution in a Nearby Embedded Cluster
• On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters
• A comprehensive set of simulations studying the influence of gas expulsion on star cluster evolution
• Gaia Data Release 1: Catalogue validation
• Kinematics in Young Star Clusters and Associations with Gaia DR2
• The statistical Analysis of Star Clusters
• The Spatial Distribution of Star Formation in the Solar Neighbourhood: Do all stars form in clusters?
• emcee v3: A Python ensemble sampling toolkit for affine-invariant MCMC
• Age determination for 269 $Gaia$ DR2 Open Clusters
• Spectroscopy of Very Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs in IC2391: Lithium depletion and Halpha emission
• An ALMA study of the Orion Integral Filament: I. Evidence for narrow fibers in a massive cloud
• Untangling the Galaxy I: Local Structure and Star Formation History of the Milky Way
• Hunting for open clusters in \textit{Gaia} DR2: $582$ new OCs in the Galactic disc
• UPMASK: unsupervised photometric membership assignment in stellar clusters
• Tidal Tails of Star Clusters
• The dynamical state of stellar structure in star-forming regions
• A Galactic-scale gas wave in the Solar Neighborhood
• The Spatial Structure of Young Stellar Clusters. I. Subclusters
• Extreme deconvolution: Inferring complete distribution functions from noisy, heterogeneous and incomplete observations
• Variations in Stellar Clustering with Environment: Dispersed Star Formation and the Origin of Faint Fuzzies
• The Kinematics of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association from Gaia DR1
• 3D shape of Orion A from Gaia DR2
• A maximum likelihood method for fitting colour-magnitude diagrams
• Do O-stars form in isolation?
• Hunting for open clusters in \textit{Gaia} DR2: the Galactic anticentre
• Evolution of star clusters in arbitrary tidal fields
• The Lithium Depletion Boundary in NGC 2547 as a test of pre-main-sequence evolutionary models
• Peculiarities in Velocity Dispersion and Surface Density Profiles of Star Clusters
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood - I. The tidal tails of the Hyades
• Dense Stellar Populations: Initial Conditions
• Expanding associations in the Vela-Puppis region: 3D structure and kinematics of the young population
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood - II. Discovery of a nearby 120° stellar stream in Gaia DR2
• TESS reveals that the nearby Pisces-Eridanus stellar stream is only 120 Myr old
• Revised Gaia Data Release 2 passbands
• The Lithium Depletion Boundary and the Age of the Young Open Cluster IC~2391
• Not all stars form in clusters -- $Gaia$-DR2 uncovers the origin of OB associations
• The effect of the dynamical state of clusters on gas expulsion and infant mortality
• Characterizing the dynamical state of star clusters from snapshots of their spatial distributions
• Praesepe (NGC 2632) and its tidal tails
• The bound fraction of young star clusters
• Search for Associations Containing Young stars (SACY): Chemical tagging IC 2391 & the Argus association
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: open clusters in Gaia-DR1 - a way forward to stellar age calibration
• Early evolution of embedded clusters
• On the difference between nuclear and contraction ages
• Kinematical fingerprints of star cluster early dynamical evolution
• Impact of a star formation efficiency profile on the evolution of open clusters
• A ring in a shell: the large-scale 6D structure of the Vela OB2 complex
• Diagnosing the Stellar Population and Tidal Structure of the Blanco1 Star Cluster
• Evidence of tidal distortions and mass loss from the old open cluster NGC 6791
• Stellar Clusters in NGC 1313: Evidence for Infant Mortality
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: Asymmetric expansion of the Lagoon Nebula cluster NGC 6530 from GES and Gaia DR2
• Accurate age determinations of several nearby open clusters containing magnetic Ap stars
• A kinematic study of Open Clusters: implications for their origin
• Uncovering a 260 pc wide, 35 Myr old filamentary relic of star formation
• A stellar relic filament in the Orion star forming region
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood - III. Like ships in the night: the Coma Berenices neighbor moving group
• Simulations of the Hyades
• Ruprecht 147: a paradigm of dissolving star cluster
• Stars that Move Together Were Born Together
• The long-term evolution of star clusters formed with a centrally-peaked star-formation-efficiency profile
• Reanalysis of nearby open clusters using Gaia DR1/TGAS and HSOY
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood. IV. Meingast 1: the most massive stellar stream in the solar neighborhood
• Stellar chromospheric activity and age relation from open clusters in the LAMOST Survey
• Improved Main Sequence Turnoff Ages of Young Open Clusters: Multicolor UBV Techniques & the Challenges of Rotation
• Tidal tails of open star clusters as probes to early gas expulsion II: Predictions for Gaia
• Discovery of a young stellar "snake" with two dissolving cores in the solar neighborhood
• Roche volume filling and the dissolution of open star clusters
• An Improved Determination of the Lithium Depletion Boundary Age of Blanco 1 and a First Look on the Effects of Magnetic Activity
• The star cluster survivability after gas expulsion is independent of the impact of the Galactic tidal field
• A census of the near-by Pisces-Eridanus stellar stream -- Commonalities with and disparities from the Pleiades
• Calibration of radii and masses of open clusters with a simulation

Cited by in corpus (81)

• Improving the open cluster census. II. An all-sky cluster catalogue with Gaia DR3
• Improving the open cluster census. III. Using cluster masses, radii, and dynamics to create a cleaned open cluster catalogue
• Structural parameters of 389 local Open Clusters
• 3D Morphology of Open Clusters in the Solar Neighborhood with Gaia EDR3: its Relation to Cluster Dynamics
• Hunting for Neighboring Open Clusters with Gaia DR3: 101 New Open Clusters within 500 pc
• Significance Mode Analysis (SigMA) for hierarchical structures. An application to the Sco-Cen OB association
• Microarcsecond Astrometry: Science Highlights from Gaia
• A Number of Nearby Moving Groups may be Fragments of Dissolving Open Clusters
• Asymmetrical tidal tails of open star clusters: stars crossing their cluster's prah challenge Newtonian gravitation
• Populating the brown dwarf and stellar boundary: Five stars with transiting companions near the hydrogen-burning mass limit
• Rotation and Lithium Confirmation of a 500 Parsec Halo for the Open Cluster NGC 2516
• New insights into the structure of open clusters in the Gaia era
• Lithium depletion boundary, stellar associations, and Gaia
• The TESS Grand Unified Hot Jupiter Survey. II. Twenty New Giant Planets
• Untangling the Galaxy III: Photometric Search for Pre-main Sequence Stars with Deep Learning
• Reconstructing the Pleiades with Gaia EDR3
• The $\rho$ Oph region revisited with Gaia EDR3
• The formation of massive stellar clusters in converging galactic flows with photoionisation
• Tidal tails in the disintegrating open cluster NGC 752
• New Coronae and Stellar Associations Revealed by a Clustering Analysis of the Solar Neighborhood
• A $Gaia$ EDR3 search for tidal tails in disintegrating open clusters
• TESS Hunt for Young and Maturing Exoplanets (THYME) VII : Membership, rotation, and lithium in the young cluster Group-X and a new young exoplanet
• Five young $\delta$ Scuti stars in the Pleiades seen with Kepler/K2
• A machine learning-based tool for open cluster membership determination in Gaia DR3
• The IACOB project XII. A new grid of northern standards for the spectral classification of B-type stars
• Stellar Rotation and Structure of the $\alpha$ Persei Complex: When Does Gyrochronology Start to Work?
• Asteroseismology of the young open cluster NGC 2516 I: Photometric and spectroscopic observations
• Extended Tidal Tails of IC 4756 detected by {\it Gaia} EDR3
• The impact of massive stars and black holes on the fate of open star clusters and their tidal streams
• Tidal tails of open clusters
• A 38 Million Year Old Neptune-Sized Planet in the Kepler Field
• Most nearby young star clusters formed in three massive complexes
• Detection of open cluster rotation fields from Gaia EDR3 proper motions
• Ongoing hierarchical massive cluster assembly: the LISCA II structure in the Perseus complex
• A Gaia astrometric view of the open clusters Pleiades, Praesepe and Blanco 1
• Decoding the Morphological Evolution of Open Clusters
• Age-dating the young open cluster UBC 1 with g-mode asteroseismology, gyrochronology, and isochrone fitting
• Disconnecting the Dots: Re-Examining the Nature of Stellar "Strings" in the Milky Way
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: Constraining evolutionary models and ages for young low mass stars with measurements of lithium depletion and rotation
• A revisited study of Cepheids in open clusters in the Gaia era
• Mass Segregation in the Hyades Cluster
• Stellar-mass black holes in the Hyades star cluster?
• The first catalog of candidate white dwarf-main sequence binaries in open star clusters: A new window into common envelope evolution
• Pearls on a String: Numerous Stellar Clusters Strung along the Same Orbit
• A Study of Stellar Spins in 15 Open Clusters
• Gaia EDR3 comparative study of protoplanetary disk fractions in young stellar clusters
• Young nearby open clusters and their luminosity functions
• Global properties, fractality, and mass segregation in single, paired, and grouped open clusters
• The Stellar "Snake" I: Whole Structure and Properties
• Uncovering new white dwarf - open cluster associations using Gaia DR3
• Unraveling UBC 274: a morphological, kinematical and chemical analysis of a disrupting open cluster
• An empirical isochrone archive for nearby open clusters
• Estimating the ages of open star clusters from properties of their extended tidal tails
• Li distribution, kinematics and detailed abundance analysis among very metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo from the HESP-GOMPA survey
• Tidal debris from Omega Centauri discovered with unsupervised machine learning
• Revisit of open clusters UPK 39, UPK 41 and PHOC 39 : a new binary open cluster found
• Open cluster dissolution rate and the initial cluster mass function in the solar neighbourhood. Modelling the age and mass distributions of clusters observed by Gaia
• The Solar System's passage through the Radcliffe wave during the middle Miocene
• Nearby open clusters with tidal features: golden sample selection and 3D structure
• A chemodynamical analysis of bright metal-poor stars from the HESP-GOMPA survey -- Indications of a non-prevailing site for light r-process elements
• Confirming the Tidal Tails of the Young Open Cluster Blanco 1 with TESS Rotation Periods
• Detection of Open Cluster Members Inside and Beyond Tidal Radius by Machine Learning Methods Based on Gaia DR3
• Finding the dispersing siblings of young open clusters. Dynamical traceback simulations using Gaia DR3
• A detection of the layered structure of nearby open clusters
• Tidal Tails of Nearby Open Clusters. II. A Review of Simulated Properties and the Reliability of Observational Catalogues
• Asteroseismology of the young open cluster NGC 2516 II. Constraining cluster age using gravity-mode pulsators
• Mass-Dependent Radial Distribution of Single and Binary Stars in the Pleiades and their Dynamical Implications
• Cluster membership analysis with supervised learning and $N$-body simulations
• Catching a Milky Way open cluster in its last breath
• The Environments around W Serpentis Systems: Independent Limits on System Masses and Extended Envelopes
• The 800pc long tidal tails of the Hyades star cluster: Possible discovery of candidate epicyclic overdensities from an open star cluster
• Probing stellar rotation in the Pleiades with gravity-mode pulsators
• The evolutionary state of the chemically peculiar members of the open cluster NGC2516
• Toward the fabric of the Milky Way I. The density of disk streams from a local $250^3$ pc${}^3$ volume
• How common can the origin of clusters Cha I, Cha II, epsilon Cha and eta Cha be?
• The late Miocene ${}^{10}$Be anomaly and the possibility of a supernova
• Tidal tails in open clusters: Morphology, binary fraction, dynamics, and rotation
• Global survey of star clusters in the Milky Way VIII. Cluster formation and evolution
• Survey of Profile Parameters of the $6196\mathring{A}$ Diffuse Interstellar Band. From Uniform Profiles to Doppler Splitting and Blueshifts
• Internal dynamics and structure of Cepheus OB4. The asymmetric expansion of Berkeley 59
• The Hierarchical Structure of the Open Cluster NGC 752