Gaia EDR3 Reveals the Substructure and Complicated Star Formation History of the Greater Taurus-Auriga Star Forming Complex

Abstract

The Taurus-Auriga complex is the prototypical low-mass star forming region, and provides a unique testbed of the star formation process, which left observable imprints on the spatial, kinematic, and temporal structure of its stellar population. Taurus's rich observational history has uncovered peculiarities that suggest a complicated star forming event, such as members at large distances from the molecular clouds and evidence of an age spread. With Gaia, an in-depth study of the Taurus census is possible to confirm membership, identify substructure, and reconstruct its star formation history. We have compiled an expansive census of the greater Taurus region, identifying spatial subgroups and confirming that Taurus is substructured across stellar density. There are two populations of subgroups: clustered groups near the clouds and sparse groups spread throughout the region. The sparse groups comprise Taurus's distributed population, which is on average older than the population near the clouds, and hosts sub-populations up to 15 Myr old. The ages of the clustered groups increase with distance, suggesting that the current star formation was triggered from behind. Still, the region is kinematically coherent, and its velocity structure reflects an initial turbulent spectrum similar to Larson's Law that has been modified by dynamical relaxation. Overall, Taurus has a complicated star formation history, with at least two epochs of star formation featuring both clustered and distributed modes. Given the correlations between age and spatial distribution, Taurus might be part of a galaxy-scale star forming event that can only begin to be understood in the Gaia era.

Accepted to AJ, 43 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables in preprint2 format

References in corpus (53)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Theory of Star Formation
• New evolutionary models for pre-main sequence and main sequence low-mass stars down to the hydrogen-burning limit
• astroquery: An Astronomical Web-Querying Package in Python
• Slow Star Formation in Dense Gas: Evidence and Implications
• A million binaries from Gaia eDR3: sample selection and validation of Gaia parallax uncertainties
• An Optical Spectroscopic Study of T Tauri Stars. I. Photospheric Properties
• A comprehensive set of simulations studying the influence of gas expulsion on star cluster evolution
• Pulkovo Compilation of Radial Velocities for 35495 Hipparcos Stars in a Common System
• Parallax Systematics and Photocenter Motions of Benchmark Eclipsing Binaries in Gaia EDR3
• Inefficient star formation through turbulence, magnetic fields and feedback
• The Disk Around CoKu Tau/4: Circumbinary, not Transitional
• A Stellar Census of the Tucana-Horologium Moving Group
• Comparing Star Formation on Large Scales in the c2d Legacy Clouds: Bolocam 1.1 mm Dust Continuum Surveys of Serpens, Perseus, and Ophiuchus
• A Galactic-scale gas wave in the Solar Neighborhood
• High-Dispersion Optical Spectra of Nearby Stars Younger Than The Sun
• The Bones of the Milky Way
• A VLT/NACO Survey for Triple and Quadruple Systems among Visual Pre-Main Sequence Binaries
• BANYAN. IV. Fundamental parameters of low-mass star candidates in nearby young stellar kinematic groups - Isochronal Age determination using Magnetic evolutionary models
• Young Nearby Loose Associations
• A Survey for New Members of Taurus with the Spitzer Space Telescope
• A Large-Area Search for Low Mass Objects in Upper Scorpius I: The Photometric Campaign and New Brown Dwarfs
• Close companions around young stars
• A Map of Dust Reddening to 4.5 kpc from Pan-STARRS1
• Multiple protostellar systems. II. A high resolution near-infrared imaging survey in nearby star-forming regions
• Spatial Distributions of Young Stars
• The Spatial Distribution of Brown Dwarfs in Taurus
• A Survey for New Members of the Taurus Star-Forming Region with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• OB associations and their origins
• A Survey for New Members of Taurus from Stellar to Planetary Masses
• Multiplicity and Optical Excess Across the Substellar Boundary in Taurus
• Exploring the age dependent properties of M and L dwarfs using Gaia and SDSS
• A Distributed Population of Low Mass Pre-Main Sequence Stars near the Taurus Molecular Clouds
• Results of SPARO 2003: Mapping Magnetic Fields in Giant Molecular Clouds
• Star cluster "infant mortality" in the Small Magellanic Cloud (Redivivus)
• Self-consistent evolution of accreting low-mass stars and brown dwarfs
• A 3D view of the Taurus star-forming region by Gaia and Herschel: multiple populations related to the filamentary molecular cloud
• Sub-stellar Companions and Stellar Multiplicity in the Taurus Star-Forming Region
• A Survey For Planetary-mass Brown Dwarfs in the Taurus and Perseus Star-forming Regions
• Dynamical Masses for Pre-Main Sequence Stars: A Preliminary Physical Orbit for V773 Tau A
• Accretion discs as regulators of stellar angular momentum evolution in the ONC and Taurus-Auriga
• Undetected Binary Stars Cause an Observed Mass Dependent Age Gradient in Upper Scorpius
• Measuring Turbulence with Young Stars in the Orion Complex
• Investigating the Nature of Variable Class I and Flat Spectrum Protostars Using 2-4$\mu$m Spectroscopy
• Low Mass Star Formation in the Taurus-Auriga Clouds
• Age spreads and the temperature dependence of age estimates in Upper Sco
• Stellar and Circumstellar Properties of Class I Protostars
• A GALEX based search for the sparse young stellar population in the Taurus-Aurigae star forming region
• The Accelerating Pace of Star Formation
• Optical spectroscopy of X-ray sources in the Taurus molecular cloud: discovery of ten new pre-main sequence stars
• Dynamical Masses of Young Stars II: Young Taurus Binaries Hubble~4, FF~Tau, and HP~Tau/G3
• Synthetic Large-Scale Galactic Filaments -- on their Formation, Physical Properties, and Resemblance to Observations
• Search for bright nearby M dwarfs with Virtual Observatory tools

Cited by in corpus (50)

• Star formation near the Sun is driven by expansion of the Local Bubble
• Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk). I. Overview of the Program and First Results
• A Census of the Taurus Star-forming Region and Neighboring Associations with Gaia
• The Mass Accretion Rate and Stellar Properties in Class I Protostars
• Low mass young stars in the Milky Way unveiled by DBSCAN and Gaia EDR3. Mapping the star forming regions within 1.5 Kpc
• The IGRINS YSO Survey I. Stellar parameters of pre-main sequence stars in Taurus-Auriga
• JWST Observations of Young protoStars (JOYS): overview of program and early results
• JWST Observations of Young protoStars (JOYS): Linked accretion and ejection in a Class I protobinary system
• An Aligned Orbit for the Young Planet V1298 Tau b
• TESS Hunt for Young and Maturing Exoplanets (THYME) IX: a 27 Myr extended population of Lower-Centaurus Crux with a transiting two-planet system
• Disk Material Inflates Gaia RUWE Values in Single Stars
• A giant planet transiting a 3-Myr protostar with a misaligned disk
• Turbulence in Milky Way Star-Forming Regions Traced by Young Stars and Gas
• Addressing Systematics in the Traceback Age of the $\beta$ Pictoris Moving Group
• V1298 Tau with TESS: Updated Ephemerides, Radii, and Period Constraints from a Second Transit of V1298 Tau e
• Monitoring the young planet host V1298 Tau with SPIRou: planetary system and evolving large-scale magnetic field
• Stellar Rotation and Structure of the $\alpha$ Persei Complex: When Does Gyrochronology Start to Work?
• MINDS. A multi-instrument investigation into the molecule-rich JWST-MIRI spectrum of the DF Tau binary system
• Determining Dust Properties in Protoplanetary Disks: SED-derived Masses and Settling With ALMA
• Zodiacal Exoplanets in Time (ZEIT) XIII: Planet Orbits and Atmospheres in the V1298 Tau System, a Keystone in Studies of Early Planetary Evolution
• Observed polarized scattered light phase functions of planet-forming disks
• SPYGLASS. II. The Multi-Generational and Multi-Origin Star Formation History of Cepheus Far North
• Revising Properties of Planet-Host Binary Systems. III. There is No Observed Radius Gap For Kepler Planets in Binary Star Systems
• The T Tauri star V410 Tau in the eyes of SPIRou and TESS
• Using the Gaia excess uncertainty as a proxy for stellar variability and age
• MADYS: the Manifold Age Determination for Young Stars
• The He I $\lambda$10830 $\mathring{A}$ line as a probe of winds and accretion in young stars in Lupus and Upper Scorpius
• Dynamical star forming history of Per OB2
• The relation between the Mass Accretion Rate and the Disk Mass in Class I Protostars
• The active weak-line T Tauri star LkCa 4 observed with SPIRou and TESS
• Wide binary stars formed in the turbulent interstellar medium
• SMA detection of an extreme millimeter flare from the young class III star HD 283572
• Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST) Science: Our Galaxy
• Discovery of Nine Super Li-rich Unevolved Stars from the LAMOST Survey
• Optical and Near-Infrared Excesses are Correlated in T Tauri Stars
• Zodiacal Exoplanets in Time (ZEIT) XII: A Directly-Imaged Planetary-Mass Companion to a Young Taurus M Dwarf Star
• Unbound stars hold the key to young star cluster history
• The evolution of protoplanetary disc radii and disc masses in star-forming regions
• The Solar System's passage through the Radcliffe wave during the middle Miocene
• ChronoFlow: A Data-Driven Model for Gyrochronology
• The MPI + CUDA Gaia AVU-GSR Parallel Solver Toward Next-generation Exascale Infrastructures
• Bayesian ages of local young stellar associations I. Through the expansion rate method
• The Gaia AVU-GSR parallel solver: preliminary studies of a LSQR-based application in perspective of exascale systems
• A High-Mass Young Star-forming Core Escaping from Its Parental Filament
• The jet and circumstellar environment of the young binary DF Tau
• The Radiowave Hunt for Young Stellar Object Emission and Demographics (RADIOHEAD): A Radio Luminosity$-$Spectral Type Dependence in Taurus$-$Auriga YSOs
• A Near-Infrared and Optical Study of NGC 5822: An Open Cluster Hosting Barium-stars and Lithium-Enriched Giant Stars
• Using a neural network approach and starspots dependent models to predict effective temperatures and ages of young stars
• Characterising the magnetospheric accretion process of DF Tauri's primary
• Understanding Accretion Variability Through TESS Observations of Taurus