Overview
- The peer-reviewed study in The Astrophysical Journal merges ESA’s Gaia motions with NASA’s TESS rotation periods to redefine the Pleiades as the dense heart of a dissolving association about 20 times larger.
- The team identifies roughly 3,000 coeval stars, about 127 million years old, moving together across nearly 600 parsecs, or approximately 2,000 light-years.
- A new Bayesian “gyro-tagging” technique uses rotation as an age filter, with fast rotators (periods under about 12 days) marking likely young members.
- The enlarged structure, named the Greater Pleiades Complex, appears to link at least six groups previously labeled as independent stellar associations.
- Researchers plan to apply the spin-plus-motion method to other nearby populations to map extended stellar families and probe the Sun’s possible birth environment.