Runaway OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun

Abstract Runaway stars are high-velocity stars ejected from their birth environments that can provide insights into the kinematic history of the stellar cluster they were ejected from. We derived runaway star probabilities for 40 O-type stars and 24,487 B-type stars taken from a recently published volume-complete sample of OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun. We fit a Galactic rotation model to the observed proper motions of these stars and identify runaway stars using both a fixed 2D peculiar velocity threshold of 23 km s−1 and by comparing individual peculiar velocities to the dispersion of the whole sample. We find runaway fractions of $17.5^{+0.1}_{-2.5}\%$ for O-type stars and $6.9\pm 0.1~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for B-type stars; both using the fixed velocity threshold method. These values are consistent with previous studies, but with differences that are largely attributable to the underlying samples of OB stars used in various studies to identify runaway stars and to variations in the methods used to select them.

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Publication Details

Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Published
2026-06-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1239
Primary Topic
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Runaway OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun

Alexis L. Quintana, N. J. Wright, Juan Martínez García
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
article

Runaway OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun

Alexis L. Quintana, N. J. Wright, Juan Martínez García
article en

Abstract

Abstract Runaway stars are high-velocity stars ejected from their birth environments that can provide insights into the kinematic history of the stellar cluster they were ejected from. We derived runaway star probabilities for 40 O-type stars and 24,487 B-type stars taken from a recently published volume-complete sample of OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun. We fit a Galactic rotation model to the observed proper motions of these stars and identify runaway stars using both a fixed 2D peculiar velocity threshold of 23 km s−1 and by comparing individual peculiar velocities to the dispersion of the whole sample. We find runaway fractions of $17.5^{+0.1}_{-2.5}\%$ for O-type stars and $6.9\pm 0.1~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for B-type stars; both using the fixed velocity threshold method. These values are consistent with previous studies, but with differences that are largely attributable to the underlying samples of OB stars used in various studies to identify runaway stars and to variations in the methods used to select them.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), University of Alicante (ES), Université Paris Cité (FR), Sorbonne Université (FR), Sorbonne Paris Cité (FR), Keele University (GB)
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
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