Abstract
Massive stars are predominantly born in stellar associations or clusters1. Their radiation fields, stellar winds and supernovae strongly impact their local environment. In the first few million years of a cluster’s life, massive stars are dynamically ejected and run away from the cluster at high speed2. However, the production rate of dynamically ejected runaways is poorly constrained. Here we report on a sample of 55 massive runaway stars ejected from the young cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. An astrometric analysis of Gaia data3,4,5 reveals two channels of dynamically ejected runaways. The first channel ejects massive stars in all directions and is consistent with dynamical interactions during and after the birth of R136. The second channel launches stars in a preferred direction and may be related to a cluster interaction. We found that 23–33% of the most luminous stars initially born in R136 are runaways. Model predictions2,6,7 have significantly underestimated the dynamical escape fraction of massive stars. Consequently, their role in shaping and heating the interstellar and galactic media and their role in driving galactic outflows are far more important than previously thought8,9.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during or analysed during the current study are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10058762)54.
Code availability
The software and code described in this paper and used to produce the findings are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10058762)54.
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Acknowledgements
We thank F. Backs, O. Ould-Boukattine, J. Hessels, D. Linssen and M. Snelders for their help and discussions. M.S. acknowledges support from NOVA. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 772225: MULTIPLES). This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency’s mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), which were processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the consortium was provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia multilateral agreement. This publication makes use of data products from 2MASS, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology and is funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
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M.S. led the runaway search and data analysis, produced all the figures and tables, and was the main contributor to the text. A.d.K. and L.K. contributed to the scientific interpretation, context and text. S.B. contributed to the results, implications and text. S.P.Z. and H.S. contributed to the scientific interpretation, implications and context. F.S. contributed to the statistical interpretation. All other authors contributed towards the discussion and provided feedback on the text.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Fig. 1 Proper motion of stars relative to R136 in the field in and around R136 with reliable astrometry.
The blue stars represent the runaways coming from R136 found in this work, while the grey stars do not originate in R136. The stars with reliable astrometry are defined in Section 1. The proper motion of R136 found in Section 1 has been subtracted and is \({\mu }_{{\alpha }^{* },{\rm{R}}136}\) = 1.654 mas yr−1 and μδ,R136 = 0.573 mas yr−1. The black circle is centred on R136 and has a radius of 2.0 pc. The dashed black rectangle depicts the region used to derive the colour-magnitude-diagram of the north-east cluster in20. The background image is taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2.2m telescope (image credit: NASA, ESA and D. Lennon et al., 2012).
Extended Data Fig. 2 Near-infrared (2MASS) colour-colour diagram of the runaway candidates.
They are coloured according to their Gaia colour GBp − GRp. The location of an O-type (< O9 V), B2 V, and M0 V star on the zero-age-main-sequence in this diagram are indicated with the black circles34. The location of main-sequence stars with spectral types between O9 V and M0 V are represented by the grey curve. The reddening lines for the O9 and M0 dwarf star are given with the black dashed lines. The reddened WN5h star VFTS 682 is shown with the open blue star. Stars in the grey shaded region in the upper left corner are excluded from the final runaway sample as they are consistent with late-type stars. The uncertainty on the data is given as a 1σ confidence interval.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Gaia colour magnitude diagram (CMD) of the runaway candidates.
Stars with blue circles and red squares were included and excluded, respectively, based on Extended Data Fig. 2. Parsec reddening lines are shown for a 10, 16, 30, 60, and 100 M⊙ star with the grey dots denoting AV equal to 0.0 to 5.0 mag in steps of 1.0 mag (RV = 3.1) for an age = 1.8 Myr. The relatively reddened WN5h star VFTS 682 is shown with the open blue star. The open yellow circles are included in the final runaway sample on the basis of their relatively blue colour. The open purple square is excluded based on its relatively red colour. The star located in the upper right is the red supergiant MH 18 that could be a massive runaway star.
Extended Data Fig. 4 On-sky distribution of the most luminous stars (log[L/L⊙] > 6.0) in R136 and 30 Doradus.
Arrows depict the transverse motion direction and the length of the arrows are proportional to the transverse velocity with respect to R136. Blue circles depict runaways coming from R136, red crosses denote stars which are classified as member of R136 (rproj < 10 pc), and green squares indicate stars which are neither runaways originating from R136 nor member of R136. The foreground image is a composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2.2m telescope (image credit: NASA, ESA D. Lennon et al., 2012). The background shows a near-infrared image of the Tarantula Nebula produced by the ESO Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA, credit: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey).
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Stoop, M., de Koter, A., Kaper, L. et al. Two waves of massive stars running away from the young cluster R136. Nature 634, 809–812 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08013-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08013-8