Ejection of a Low Mass Star in a Young Stellar System in Taurus

Abstract

We present the analysis of high angular resolution VLA radio observations, made at eleven epochs over the last 20 years, of the multiple system T Tauri. One of the sources (Sb) in the system has moved at moderate speed (5-10 km/s), on an apparently elliptical orbit during the first 15 years of observations, but after a close (< 2 AU) encounter with the source Sa, it appears to have accelerated westward to about 20 km/s in the last few years. Such a dramatic orbital change most probably indicates that Sb has just suffered an ejection - which would be the first such event ever detected. Whether Sb will ultimately stay on a highly elliptical bound orbit, or whether it will leave the system altogether will be known with about five more years of observations.

4 pages, accepter in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (6)

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• The origin of runaway stars
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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Multi-epoch VLBA observations of T Tauri South
• Mapping the Circumstellar Environment of T Tauri with Fluorescent H_2 Emission
• Dynamical Mass Estimates for Incomplete Orbits: Young Multiple Stars in Taurus and Ophiuchus
• Orbits and Masses in the T Tauri System
• The circumstellar environment of T Tau S at high spatial and spectral resolution
• No Fossil Disk in the T Tauri Multiple System V773 Tau
• A High Spatial Resolution Infrared View of the T Tauri Multiple System
• Internal and relative motions of the Taurus and Ophiuchus star-forming regions
• Accurate stellar masses in the multiple system T Tau
• A Single Circumstellar Disk in the SVS 13 Close Binary System
• Orbits in the T Tauri triple system observed with SPHERE
• Near-Infrared, Adaptive Optics Observations of the T Tauri Multiple-Star System
• PV Ceph: Young Star Caught Speeding?
• Low-Mass Runaway Stars from the Orion Trapezium Cluster
• Proper Motions of Thermal Radio Sources near HH 7-11 in the NGC 1333 Star Forming Region
• VLBA determinations of the distances to nearby star-forming regions