HST Images Do Not Support the Presence of Three High-Velocity, Low-Mass Runaway Stars in the Core of the Orion Nebula Cluster
O'Dell, C. R.; Robberto, Massimo; Poveda, Arcadio; Allen, Christine
United States, Mexico
Abstract
A recent article has employed the determination from ground-based images of high proper motions in the Orion Nebula cluster to argue that JW 349, JW 355, and JW 451 are high-velocity (38, 89, and 69 km s-1, respectively) low-mass runaway stars. We report on the measurement of the proper motions of these stars using images made by the Hubble Space Telescope's WFPC2 imager and find that there is no evidence of motions above 6.2 km s-1 for JW 349 or above 7.9 km s-1 for JW 355, while the motion of 5.5 km s-1 for JW 451 is only slightly larger than the measurement uncertainty of 3.9 km s-1. We conclude that there is no observational support for these stars being high-velocity runaway stars.
Based in part on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.