Mapping young stellar populations towards Orion with Gaia DR1 [SSA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.03815


We use the first data release of the Gaia mission to explore the three dimensional arrangement and the age ordering of the many stellar groups towards the Orion OB association, aiming at a new classification and characterization of the stellar population. We make use of the parallaxes and proper motions provided in the Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) sub-set of the Gaia catalogue, and of the combination of Gaia and 2MASS photometry. In TGAS we find evidence for the presence of a young population, at a parallax $\varpi \sim 2.65 \, \mathrm{mas}$, loosely distributed around some known clusters: 25 Ori, $\epsilon$ Ori and $\sigma$ Ori, and NGC 1980 ($\iota$ Ori). The low mass counterpart of this population is visible in the color-magnitude diagrams constructed by combining Gaia and 2MASS photometry. We study the density distribution of the young sources in the sky. We find the same groups as in TGAS, and also some other density enhancements that might be related to the recently discovered Orion X group, the Orion dust ring, and to the $\lambda$ Ori complex. We estimate the ages of this population and we infer the presence of an age gradient going from 25 Ori (13-15 Myr) to the ONC (1-2 Myr). We confirm this age ordering by repeating the Bayesian fit using the Pan-STARRS1 data. The estimated ages towards the NGC 1980 cluster span a broad range of values. This can either be due to the presence of two populations coming from two different episodes of star formation or to a large spread along the line of sight of the same population. Our results form the first step towards using the Gaia data to unravel the complex star formation history of the Orion region in terms of the different star formation episodes, their duration, and their effects on the surrounding interstellar medium.

Read this paper on arXiv…

E. Zari, A. Brown, J. Bruijne, et. al.
Mon, 13 Nov 17
18/46

Comments: 17 pages, 17 figures