Thursday, August 1, 2013

Potential Members of Stellar Kinematic Groups Within 30 pc of the Sun

Potential Members of Stellar Kinematic Groups Within 30 pc of the Sun

Authors: Tadashi Nakajima & Jun-Ichi Morino

Purpose: Identify kinematic groups from their XYZ positions and UVW space velocities.


Background:

  • Why find kinematic groups?
    • ages of individual stars are difficult to determine
    • it is easier to find the age of a system of stars using their bulk properties
    • we are interested in finding young stars because their giant planets may be warm enough to be detectable with direct imaging
  • within 30 pc, groups are distributed over a wider range of 3D spatial coordinates
    • cannot JUST use their positions to identify groups
Method:
  • The sample
    • WEB catalog of radial velocities
    • Hipparcos catalog of parallaxes (distances)
    • distance + radial velocity will give you 3D space velocity (UVWs)
    • choose V<45km/s for the youngest stars
      • should be no kinematic bias since the highest velocity stars are excluded
    • choose d>30pc for the most nearby stars
    • 966 stars made this initial cut
      • 383 within 20 pc
      • 265 between 20-25 pc
      • 318 between 25-30 pc
  • kinematic groups
    • IC 2391, Castor, Ursa Major, Hyades, Pleiades, beta Pic, TW Hya, AB Dor, Eta Cha, Cha-Near, and Tuc-Hor (from Zuckerman & Song 2004 and Montes et al. 2001)
    • groups centers:
      • IC 2391, Castor, Ursa Major, Hyades - centered on Sun
      • centers of other groups taken from Z&S 2004
    • require that the candidate members of a SKG must have a 3D velocity within 8km/s of the group mean
    • calculate the birth position of the candidates in relation to the birth position of the SKG
      • use the epicyclic approximation, the 3D velocity vectors, 3D positions, and group age
      • use only in tie-breakers between two possible group memberships
Results:
  • 137 (of 966) were selected as candidate members of SGKs
  • comparison with other works (Maldonado et al. 2010, Lopez-Santiago et al. 2006, Zuckerman 7 Song 2004:
    • 43 stars in common
    • 8 of 43 are determined (in this work) to be non-members
  • 102 new members of SKGs not listed in other works

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