Flare Activity and Cluster Membership Probability of Flare Stars

Mirzoyan (1976) showed that the concentration of flare stars around the center of the Pleiades cluster (Alcyone) was the same, irrespective of their proper motions. At that time, however, proper motions of only a few flare stars were known. The result was confirmed on the basis of more extensive observational material (Chavushian 1979, Mirzoyan 1983). Photographic observations of stellar flares in the general galactic field during 181 hours yielded the detection of only a single flare, i.e. the percentage of flare stars in the general galactic field is about 10% of the total number of flare stars detected in the regions of stellar clusters and associations (Chavushian 1979, Mirzoyan et al. 1988).This result shows that flare activity can be considered as a definitive cluster membership criterion, which appears to be a better one than the cluster membership probability, which is based on proper motions. To prove this, cluster membership probabilities (Stauffer et al. 1991) for 408 Pleiades cluster flare stars from the catalogue by Haro et al. (1982), are used (Table 1).

The largest molecular complexes in the first Galactic quadrant

The CO emission within a few kiloparsecs of the Sun is dominated by a small number of very large molecular complexes, including those associated with the Orion Nebula (Thaddeus 1982), M16 and M17 (Elmegreen, Lada, and Dickinson 1979), and NGC7538 (Cohen et al. 1980). These complexes have masses from several 105 to 106 M⊙ and are generally very well-defined objects. They are also well endowed with HII regions, stellar clusters and associations, masers, and other Population-I objects whose distances can be measured. The complexes are thus valuable probes of the large-scale structure of the Galaxy.