Poster abstract details
Special Spatial Orientation of the Orbital Planes of Eclipsing Binaries in NGC 2264: Implications for Cluster Formation
Abstract
CoRoT observed the star forming region and open cluster NGC 2264 in 2007/08. Then CoRoT, Spitzer, Chandra and MOST simultaneously re-observed the field in 2011/12. As part of our ground-based support-activity for CoRoT, we observed the field with the 25 cm BEST II telescope (OCA, Chile) during 50 nights in 2008/09. These observations can be useful for checking variable contaminant sources that pollute the relatively large PSF of CoRoT, and to study the behaviour of variable stars between the two epochs of the CoRoT observations.
From the data we detected 930 new variable stars in the field. A detailed study of this data set indicates that the relative frequency of the Algol-type eclipsing binaries increases from the field toward the center of the cluster. This may indicate that the orbital planes of the binary stars among the cluster members are not isotropically distributed but they have a specific orientation. This idea agrees with the parallel orientation of outflows around young stellar objects found, suggesting that a specific orientation of the angular
momentum vector in star forming regions may exist (Froebrich & Scholz 2003; Trinidad et al. 2004).
From the data we detected 930 new variable stars in the field. A detailed study of this data set indicates that the relative frequency of the Algol-type eclipsing binaries increases from the field toward the center of the cluster. This may indicate that the orbital planes of the binary stars among the cluster members are not isotropically distributed but they have a specific orientation. This idea agrees with the parallel orientation of outflows around young stellar objects found, suggesting that a specific orientation of the angular
momentum vector in star forming regions may exist (Froebrich & Scholz 2003; Trinidad et al. 2004).