Astron. Astrophys. 325, 613-622 (1997)

5. Summary and conclusion

We have presented new proper motions taken from the STARNET catalogue of 62 stars in the central region of Taurus-Auriga whose kinematics is consistent with membership to the association. These stars show a velocity dispersion small compared to 3 km s^-1, a limit which is given by the accuracy of the STARNET proper motions. This is consistent with the derivation of an upper limit for the velocity dispersion in subgroups of the Taurus-Auriga complex of about 1-2 km s^-1 by Jones & Herbig (1979).

Among the high proper motion stars in our sample we found 8 new Pleiades candidates or runaways (and re-identified 1 known before). They are located up to away from the centre of the Pleiades cluster, and their directions of motion are consistent with them being ejected from the cluster a few million years ago.

Finally, all attempts to kinematically relate the recently detected PMS stars south of the Taurus-Auriga cloud to the central part of this association have failed. We do not find any young stars in our sample that appear to be ejected from the Taurus-Auriga association. We conclude from this that the star formation scenario - at least for the G and early K type stars - in this southern area is different from the one in the central part.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: April 28, 1998

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