Encounters of star clusters as a possible source of disturbances in their internal structure

arXiv:2606.14833 · astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-06-12 · Read on arXiv

M. D. Sizova, L. A. Maksimova, S. V. Vereshchagin

astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-06-12

Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures

License: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

The gist: We searched for past close encounters of the Hyades and Pleiades with all 5736 clusters of the Hunt & Reffert catalog, integrating orbits with galpy over the last 100 Myr and validating candidates by

Terminology

Abstract

We searched for past close encounters of the Hyades and Pleiades with all 5736 clusters of the Hunt & Reffert catalog, integrating orbits with galpy over the last 100 Myr and validating candidates by Monte Carlo. Most nominally close pairs are unstable under catalog errors; only two remain reliable: Pleiades and HSC 751 and Hyades and HSC 2986. HSC 2986 coincides with the star-forming cloud Corona Australis, which the Hyades crossed about 5 Myr ago, passing 11 pc from its dense core. Such interactions may be the cause of the mini-clusters discovered in the Pleiades.

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