Corona-Australis DANCe. I. Revisiting the census of stars with Gaia-DR2 data

Abstract

Context. Corona-Australis is one of the nearest regions to the Sun with recent and ongoing star formation, but the current picture of its stellar (and substellar) content is not complete yet.

Aims. We take advantage of the second data release of the Gaia space mission to revisit the stellar census and search for additional members of the young stellar association in Corona-Australis.

Methods. We applied a probabilistic method to infer membership probabilities based on a multidimensional astrometric and photometric data set over a field of 128 deg2 around the dark clouds of the region.

Results. We identify 313 high-probability candidate members to the Corona-Australis association, 262 of which had never been reported as members before. Our sample of members covers the magnitude range between G ≳ 5 mag and G ≲ 20 mag, and it reveals the existence of two kinematically and spatially distinct subgroups. There is a distributed “off-cloud” population of stars located in the north of the dark clouds that is twice as numerous as the historically known “on-cloud” population that is concentrated around the densest cores. By comparing the location of the stars in the HR-diagram with evolutionary models, we show that these two populations are younger than 10 Myr. Based on their infrared excess emission, we identify 28 Class II and 215 Class III stars among the sources with available infrared photometry, and we conclude that the frequency of Class II stars (i.e. “disc-bearing” stars) in the on-cloud region is twice as large as compared to the off-cloud population. The distance derived for the Corona-Australis region based on this updated census is d = 149.4 +0.4−0.4 pc, which exceeds previous estimates by about 20 pc.

Conclusions. In this paper we provide the most complete census of stars in Corona-Australis available to date that can be confirmed with Gaia data. Furthermore, we report on the discovery of an extended and more evolved population of young stars beyond the region of the dark clouds, which was extensively surveyed in the past.