Early-A stars from IPHAS, and their distribution in and around the Cyg OB2 association

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to identify and analyze A-type stars in the Galactic Plane using IPHAS data, revealing a young stellar population around Cyg OB2 with implications for cluster mass and age.

Contribution

It introduces a new photometric method for selecting A stars and estimating their distances and reddenings, applied to the Cyg OB2 region, revealing its stellar population structure.

Findings

Identified over 1000 A stars in the Cyg OB2 region.

Discovered a concentration of ~200 A stars offset from known OB stars.

Estimated the cluster's age to be around 5-7 million years.

Abstract

Stellar photometry derived from the INT/WFC Photometric H$\alpha$ Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS) can be used to identify large, reliable samples of A0-A5 dwarfs. For every A star, so identified, it is also possible to derive individual reddening and distance estimates, under the assumption that most selected objects are on or near the main sequence, at a mean absolute r' magnitude of 1.5 -- 1.6. This study presents the method for obtaining such samples and shows that the known reddenings and distances to the open clusters NGC 7510 and NGC 7790 are successfully recovered. A sample of over 1000 A stars is then obtained from IPHAS data in the magnitude range 13.5 < r' < 20 from the region of sky including the massive northern OB association Cyg OB2. Analysis of these data reveals a concentration of ~200 A stars over an area about a degree across, offset mainly to the south of the known 1--3 Myr old OB stars in Cyg OB2: their dereddened r' magnitudes fall in the range 11.8 to 12.5. These are consistent with a ~7 Myr old stellar population at DM = 10.8, or with an age of ~5 Myr at DM = 11.2. The number of A stars found in this clustering alone is consistent with a lower limit to the cluster mass of ~10000 M-sun.