New Parallaxes for the Upper Scorpius OB Association

• Published in: arXiv.org 2017-10
• Main Authors: Donaldson, Jessica, Weinberger, Alycia, Gagné, Jonathan, Boss, Alan, Keiser, Sandy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accretion disks; Age; Kinematics; Low mass stars; Parallax; Planet formation; Pre-main sequence stars; Radial velocity; Stellar age; Stellar evolution; Subgroups; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1710.00909

Upper Scorpius is a subgroup of the nearest OB association, Scorpius--Centaurus. Its young age makes it an important association to study star and planet formation. We present parallaxes to 52 low mass stars in Upper Scorpius, 28 of which have full kinematics. We measure ages of the individual stars by combining our measured parallaxes with pre-main sequence evolutionary tracks. We find there is a significant difference in the ages of stars with and without circumstellar disks. The stars without disks have a mean age of 4.9+/-0.8 Myr and those with disks have an older mean age of 8.2+/-0.9 Myr. This somewhat counterintuitive result suggests that evolutionary effects in young stars can dominate their apparent ages. We also attempt to use the 28 stars with full kinematics (i.e.\ proper motion, radial velocity, and parallax) to trace the stars back in time to their original birthplace to obtain a trackback age. We find, as expected given large measurement uncertainties on available radial velocity measurements, that measurement uncertainties alone cause the group to diverge after a few Myr.