Local kinematics of K and M giants from CORAVEL/Hipparcos/Tycho-2 data: Revisiting the concept of superclusters

By Benoit Famaey, A. Jorissen, X. Luri, M. Mayor, S. Udry, H. Dejonghe, C. Turon. 2004

357 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The availability of the Hipparcos Catalogue has triggered many kinematic and dynamical studies of the solar neighbourhood. Nevertheless, those studies generally lacked the third component of the space velocities, i.e., the radial velocities. This work presents the kinematic analysis of 5952 K and 739 M giants in the solar neighbourhood which includes for the first time radial velocity data from a large survey performed with the CORAVEL spectrovelocimeter. It also uses proper motions from the Tycho-2 catalogue, which are expected to be more accurate than the Hipparcos ones. An important by-product of this study is the observed fraction of only 5.7% of spectroscopic binaries among M giants as compared to 13.7% for K giants. After excluding the binaries for which no center-of-mass velocity could be estimated, 5311 K and 719 M giants remain in the final sample.  The UV -plane constructed from these data for the stars with precise parallaxes ($\sigma_\pi/\pi \le 20$%) reveals a rich small-scale structure, with several clumps corresponding to the Hercules stream, the Sirius moving group, and the Hyades and Pleiades superclusters. A maximum-likelihood method, based on a Bayesian approach, has been applied to the data, in order to make full use of all the available stars (not only those with precise parallaxes) and to derive the kinematic properties of these subgroups. Isochrones in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram reveal a very wide range of ages for stars belonging to these groups. These groups are most probably related to the dynamical perturbation by transient spiral waves (as recently modelled by De Simone et al. [CITE]) rather than to cluster remnants. A possible explanation for the presence of young group/clusters in the same area of the UV -plane is that they have been put there by the spiral wave associated with their formation, while the kinematics of the older stars of our sample has also been disturbed by the same wave. The emerging picture is thus one of dynamical streams pervading the solar neighbourhood and travelling in the Galaxy with similar space velocities. The term dynamical stream is more appropriate than the traditional term supercluster since it involves stars of different ages, not born at the same place nor at the same time. The position of those streams in the UV -plane is responsible for the vertex deviation of $16.2^\circ \pm 5.6^\circ$ for the whole sample. Our study suggests that the vertex deviation for younger populations could have the same dynamical origin.  The underlying velocity ellipsoid, extracted by the maximum-likelihood method after removal of the streams, is not centered on the value commonly accepted for the radial antisolar motion: it is centered on $\langle U \rangle = -2.78\pm1.07$ km s -1 . However, the full data set (including the various streams) does yield the usual value for the radial solar motion, when properly accounting for the biases inherent to this kind of analysis (namely, $\langle U \rangle = -10.25\pm0.15$ km s -1 ). This discrepancy clearly raises the essential question of how to derive the solar motion in the presence of dynamical perturbations altering the kinematics of the solar neighbourhood: does there exist in the solar neighbourhood a subset of stars having no net radial motion which can be used as a reference against which to measure the solar motion?

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

LAMOST Experiment for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (LEGUE) — The survey's science plan (2012, methodology): “The∼ 14, 000 F & G dwarfs in the GCS survey have full phase-space coordinates; a follow-up survey by Famaey et al. (2005) has similar data for∼ 6000 K & M stars.”
PLANETS AROUND LOW-MASS STARS (PALMS). IV. THE OUTER ARCHITECTURE OF M DWARF PLANETARY SYSTEMS (2014, background): “However, the origin and relationship of this kinematic overdensity with the Hyades cluster is not clear and is unlikely to be useful for age-dating purposes (e.g., Famaey et al. 2005).”
Extreme deconvolution: Inferring complete distribution functions from noisy, heterogeneous and incomplete observations (2009, methodology): “The recovered distribution compares favorably with other reconstructions of the velocity distribution of stars in the Solar neighborhood, based on the same sample of stars (using a maximum penalized likelihood density estimation technique, Dehnen 1998), as well as with those based on other samples o”
The Nearest Young Moving Groups (2006, background): “…-plane can be explained as the result of the juxtaposition of several star forming bursts in adjacent cells of the velocity field (see Montes et al. 2001, and references therein) or dynamical perturbations caused by spiral waves (De Simone et al. 2004; Famaey et al. 2005; Quillen & Minchev 2005).”
A NEW MECHANISM FOR RADIAL MIGRATION IN GALACTIC DISKS: SPIRAL–BAR RESONANCE OVERLAP (2009, background): “…motions of star-forming regions (Xu et al. 2006), (iii) the moving groups in the SN (Dehnen 1998) containing stars of very different ages (Famaey et al. 2005; Antoja et al. 2008), suggesting that their clumping in velocity space is most likely not due to irregular star formation,…”
Revisiting the population of Galactic open clusters (2005, background): “This cluster group must not be confused with the Hyades supercluster proposed by Eggen (1958, 1975) and recently studied by Famaey et al. (2005) who considered several hundreds of stars in the Solar vicinity (up to 500 pc) which have similar space velocities as the Hyades.”
Radial Velocity Search for Extrasolar Planets in Visual Binary Systems (2009, background): “However, the central star is an evolved K giant star (K5 III: Taylor 1999; Famaey et al. 2005).”
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) (2007, neutral): “…substructure in the disk due to perturbations and resonances from — spiral arms, the bar, or other (e.g., dark matter) substructure (e.g., Dehnen 1998; Famaey et al. 2005; Junqueira et al. 2015), the detection of stellar binary companions (e.g., Terrien et al. 2014), the assessment of stellar…”
The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, background): “This triaxial potential is known to induce resonances amongst stars on low inclination orbits (Dehnen 2001; Famaey et al. 2005), and may well cause streams to become more diffuse in time, and hence harder to recover.”
Pulkovo Compilation of Radial Velocities for 35 495 Hipparcos stars in a common system (2006, background): “…solar neighborhood (below referred to as GCS) (Nordström et al. 2004) and the kinematic survey of more than 6000 K and M giants based on observations with CORAVEL spectrometers (below referred to as KMG) (Famaey et al. 2005), have been compiled since the publication of these compilation catalogs.”
The GALAH survey and Gaia DR2: dissecting the stellar disc’s phase space by age, action, chemistry, and location (2018, background): “The traditional explanation of such ‘star streams’ is that they are dissolving star clusters, but from the work of Dehnen (1998) and Famaey et al. (2005), it became clear that the clumps in the UV plane were heterogeneous in age and metallicity so they could not comprise stars that formed together,…”
BANYAN. VII. A NEW POPULATION OF YOUNG SUBSTELLAR CANDIDATE MEMBERS OF NEARBY MOVING GROUPS FROM THE BASS SURVEY (2015, background): “Famaey et al. (2005) demonstrated that the Pleiades stream is not a moving group but rather a dynamical stream of stars without a common origin.”
Giants in the Local Region (2007, methodology): “…were computed for the sample using theHipparcos proper motions (Perryman et al. 1997) and radial velocities from either de Medeiros & Mayor (1999) or Famaey et al. (2005), or determined from our spectra (accuracy of about 1 km s 1 based on comparison with de Medeiros & Mayor and Famaey et al.).”
Vertical distribution of Galactic disk stars , IV. AMR and AVR from clump giants (2007, methodology): “For the remaining stars, we used the radial velocities in Famaey et al. (2005) and Barbier-Bossat et al. (2000).”
XHIP: An extended hipparcos compilation (2011, background): “Source CDS Catalog ID Thirty New Low-mass Spectroscopic Binaries, Shkolnik et al., 2010 … The Ninth Catalogue of Spectroscopic Binary Orbits, version 2009-Aug (“B/sb9”, Pourbaix et al., 2004-2009) B/sb9 Kinematics of W UMa-type binaries Bilir et al., 2005 … Kinematics of chromospherically active bin”
Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology (2016, background): “Due to the inhomogeneity in age and metallicity of Hercules stars, a number of works (e.g., Bensby et al. 2007; Famaey et al. 2005, 2007) have concluded that a dynamical effect, such as the influence of the bar, is a more likely explanation than a dispersed cluster.”
Astrophysical supplements to the ASCC‐2.5: Ia. Radial velocities of ∼55000 stars and mean radial velocities of 516 Galactic open clusters and associations (2007, background): “Black, red and blue points correspond to stars from Nordström et al. (2004), Famaey et al. (2005) and Goncharov (2006), respectively.”
Exploring the Milky Way stellar disk - A detailed elemental abundance study of 714 F and G dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood (2013, background): “…that there are substantial kinematical sub-structures present in the Solar neighbourhood that can be associated wih various stellar streams and moving groups (e.g., Nordströmet al. 2004; Navarro et al. 2004; Famaey et al. 2005; Soubiran & Gi- rard 2005; Arifyanto & Fuchs 2006; Helmi et al. 2006).”
Radial migration in galactic disks caused by resonance overlap of multiple patterns: Self-consistent simulations (2010, background): “Evidence for this comes from,e.g, the moving groups in the solar neighbourhood (Dehnen, 1998) containing stars of very different ages (Famaey et al., 2005) or the non-zero value of theC and K Oort constants for red giant stars in the extended local disk (Olling & Dehnen, 2003; Siebert et al., 2010).”