Pearls on a String: Numerous Stellar Clusters Strung Along the Same Orbit

Abstract

Stars originate from the dense interstellar medium, which exhibits filamentary structure to scales of ∼1 kpc in galaxies like our Milky Way. We explore quantitatively how much resulting large-scale correlation there is among different stellar clusters and associations in orbit-phase space, characterized here by actions and angles. As a starting point, we identified 55 prominent stellar overdensities in the 6D space of orbit (actions) and orbit-phase (angles) among the ∼2.8 million stars with radial velocities from Gaia EDR3 and with d ≤ 800 pc. We then explored the orbit-phase distribution of all sample stars in the same orbit patch as any one of these 55 overdensities. We find that very commonly numerous other distinct orbit-phase overdensities exist along these same orbits, like pearls on a string. These “pearls” range from known stellar clusters to loose, unrecognized associations. Among orbit patches defined by one initial orbit-phase overdensity, 50% contain at least 8 additional orbit-phase pearls of 10 cataloged members; 20% of them contain 20 additional pearls. This is in contrast to matching orbit patches sampled from a smooth mock catalog, or offset nearby orbit patches, where there are only 2 (or 5, respectively) comparable pearls. Our findings quantify for the first time how common it is for star clusters and associations to form at distinct orbit-phases of nearly the same orbit. This may eventually offer a new way to probe the 6D orbit structure of the filamentary interstellar medium.