In
astronomy, the Columba association is a nearby 42+6 −4Myr old
stellar association.[1][a] The association is named after the constellation
Columba which contains many of the stars first recognized in the group.
Special interest
Stars in young associations are a popular target for professional
astronomers. The stars are often surrounded by
circumstellar disks, discs of dust and other planet forming matter around a young star, and young planets that still glow in the
infrared spectrum, which makes it easier to
directly image, using the light reflected off of the planets to obtain an image of the planets. The most famous star in the Columba association is HR 8799 which has four directly imaged planets.
The group was at first not recognized as an individual group, but stars within the group were first assigned to the
Great Austral Young Association (GAYA), because it showed similar movement and distance compared with two nearby groups. Only later it became clear that GAYA is subdivided into three groups: the
Tucana-Horologium association, the
Carina association and the Columba association.[2]
^
A
stellar association – sometimes called a moving group – represents a group of
stars with similar distance,
movement, and
age. Since the stars are located in the same general region of space, and moving at the same speed in the same direction, and all formed approximately at the same time, they are suspected of having originally formed together. There is some speculation that many stellar associations are a follow-on stage of
open clusters.
References
^
ab
Bell, Cameron P.M.; Mamajek, Eric E.; Naylor, Tim (November 2015). "A self-consistent, absolute isochronal age scale for young moving groups in the solar neighbourhood". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 454 (1): 593–614.
arXiv:1508.05955.
Bibcode:
2015MNRAS.454..593B.
doi:
10.1093/mnras/stv1981.
ISSN0035-8711.