An analysis of four stellar rings
Abstract
About 50 years ago, one thousand ring-like structures (called stellar-rings) were discovered by Isserstedt (1968). They were believed to be groups of young stars formed by shell-like triggered star formation, which would make them excellent tracers of spiral arms, for example. Neglected for 40 years, we used highly accurate kinematic, astrometric, and photometric data to investigate the four most prominent stellar rings. The aim is to investigate if those structures are indeed physically related groups of stars. We used proper motions and parallaxes from the Gaia DR2 to calculate distances and to search for common properties. Color-magnitude diagrams using BVJHKs measurements were investigated and isochrones fitted. None of the four stellar rings consists of a physically related group of young stars. The location of stars in the line-of-sight mimics a ring-like structure on the sky. The color-magnitude diagrams are typical for an integrated field population and not for a young star cluster, for example. The currently available data are sufficient to analyze ring-like structures with a high statistical significance. This allows a new search for such structures in the Milky Way.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{paunzen2026analysis,
title = {{An analysis of four stellar rings}},
author = {E. Paunzen and J. Florian and A. Gütl-Wallner and A. Herdin and E. Kralofsky and K. Leschinski and M. Mach and H. M. Maitzen and M. Prišegen and M. Rockenbauer and M. Rode-Paunzen and S. Wallner},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.08942},
eprint = {2609.08942},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08942},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - An analysis of four stellar rings
AU - E. Paunzen
AU - J. Florian
AU - A. Gütl-Wallner
AU - A. Herdin
AU - E. Kralofsky
AU - K. Leschinski
AU - M. Mach
AU - H. M. Maitzen
AU - M. Prišegen
AU - M. Rockenbauer
AU - M. Rode-Paunzen
AU - S. Wallner
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/08
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.08942
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08942
AB - About 50 years ago, one thousand ring-like structures (called stellar-rings) were discovered by Isserstedt (1968). They were believed to be groups of young stars formed by shell-like triggered star formation, which would make them excellent tracers of spiral arms, for example. Neglected for 40 years, we used highly accurate kinematic, astrometric, and photometric data to investigate the four most prominent stellar rings. The aim is to investigate if those structures are indeed physically related groups of stars. We used proper motions and parallaxes from the Gaia DR2 to calculate distances and to search for common properties. Color-magnitude diagrams using BVJHKs measurements were investigated and isochrones fitted. None of the four stellar rings consists of a physically related group of young stars. The location of stars in the line-of-sight mimics a ring-like structure on the sky. The color-magnitude diagrams are typical for an integrated field population and not for a young star cluster, for example. The currently available data are sufficient to analyze ring-like structures with a high statistical significance. This allows a new search for such structures in the Milky Way.
ER -