A Census of the Taurus Star-forming Region and Neighboring Associations with Gaia

TL;DR

This study uses Gaia DR3 data to identify and characterize members of the Taurus star-forming region and nearby associations, revealing their ages, kinematics, and disk presence, and clarifying their relationship with the Taurus complex.

Contribution

It provides a new, detailed catalog of Taurus members and neighboring associations, with kinematic grouping, age estimates, and disk detection, enhancing understanding of their properties and relationships.

Findings

New catalog of 532 Taurus members with minor updates from previous work.

Identified 1378 candidate members of seven nearby associations.

Most Taurus groups are 1-3 Myr old; associations range from 13 to 56 Myr.

Abstract

I have used high-precision photometry and astrometry from the third data release of Gaia (DR3) to perform a survey for members of the Taurus star-forming region and young associations in its vicinity. This work has produced a new catalog of 532 adopted members of Taurus, which has only minor changes relative to the previous catalog from Esplin & Luhman 2019. I have used the Gaia astrometry to divide the Taurus members into 13 groups that have distinct kinematics. Meanwhile, I have identified 1378 candidate members of seven associations near Taurus. All of these associations have histograms of spectral types that peak near M5 (~0.15 Msun), resembling other young populations in the solar neighborhood. For the Taurus groups and neighboring associations, I have estimated ages from their sequences of low-mass stars in Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams. Most of the Taurus groups have median ages of ~1-3 Myr while the associations have ages ranging from 13 to 56 Myr. I have used mid-infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to search for excess emission from circumstellar disks among the candidate members of the associations. Disks are detected for 51 stars, 20 of which are reported for the first time in this work. Some recent studies have proposed that samples of older stars (>=10 Myr) found in the vicinity of Taurus represent a distributed population that is associated with the Taurus cloud complex. However, I find that most of those stars have kinematics that are inconsistent with any relationship with Taurus.