2025/08/12 by Beomdu Lim, Hyeong-Sik Yun, Lim, Beomdu +12 · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.08666
openalex publication_date 2025/08/12 · arxiv published 2025/08/12 · arxiv updated 2025/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a kinematic study of young stars in Messier 16 (M16) using the Gaia Data Release 3 and high-resolution spectra. A total of 345 stars are selected as genuine members using the published lists of X-ray, infrared sources, and early-type stars as well as the Gaia data. There is severe differential reddening across this region and the reddening law of the intracluster medium appears abnormal. The distance to M16, derived from the parallaxes of the members, is about 1.7 kpc. The ages of members, estimated by comparing their color-magnitude diagram with theoretical isochrones, range from 1 Myr to 4 Myr. This star-forming region is composed of an open cluster (NGC 6611) and a distributed population. This cluster shows a clear pattern of expansion and rotation. Some of the distributed population are spatially associated with the gas pillars located at the ridge of H II bubble. In particular, several stars moving away from the cluster are physically associated with the northeastern pillar. In addition, their younger ages support the idea that the formation of these stars was triggered by the feedback from massive stars in NGC 6611. On the other hand, the other stars do not show systematic radial or stream motions; therefore, they likely formed through spontaneous star formation events. We discuss the formation of young stars in the context of cluster expansion, spontaneous star formation, and feedback-driven star formation, and suggest that all of these mechanisms possibly contributed to their formation.