J/A+A/708/A78 Milky Way yellow super- and hyper-giants (Kasikov+, 2026)
Painting a family portrait of the yellow super- and hyper-giants in the
Milky Way. I. Constraining the distances and luminosities.
Kasikov A., Mehner A., Kolka I., Aret A.
<Astron. Astrophys. 708, A78 (2026)>
=2026A&A...708A..78K 2026A&A...708A..78K (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Milky Way ; Stars, supergiant ; Stars, distances
Keywords: methods: observational - stars: distances - stars: massive -
supergiants
Abstract:
Distances to evolved massive stars in the Milky Way are not well
constrained by Gaia parallaxes due to their brightness and
variability. This makes it difficult to determine their fundamental
stellar parameters, such as radius or luminosity, and infer their
evolutionary states.
We aim to improve the distance estimates of Yellow Hypergiants (YHGs)
and Yellow Supergiants (YSGs) by identifying possible cluster and
association memberships. Using these distances, we derived updated
luminosities and revised their positions in the Hertzsprung-Russell
diagram.
We compiled from the literature a sample of 35 luminous yellow massive
stars (YHGs and the most luminous YSGs). We used Gaia DR3 astrometry
to identify possible membership in clusters and OB associations. We
derived distances by combining the parallaxes of nearby co-moving
stars. We independently validated these distances by comparing the
stellar radial velocities to the Galactic HI kinematic map. We
combined angular diameters and effective temperature values from the
literature with the new distances to estimate luminosities.
We improved the distance estimates for 28 of the 35 stars through
association with co-moving stellar groups. For an additional six
stars, we provided distance estimates based on the HI kinematic map.
For one star, the distance remains unclear. Most YSGs are members of
young stellar populations, while the environments of the YHGs are more
diverse, and for some of them their origin populations remain unclear.
We derived updated luminosities for a subset of 20 stars. Most YHGs
have luminosities above log L/L=5.4, while YSGs occupy a wider range
of luminosities and the most luminous YSGs have luminosities similar
to YHGs.
Description:
This catalogue contains the Gaia DR3 data used in the paper for
identified nearby stars for each YHG and YSG. We include corrected
parallaxes and uncertainties as described in the paper and weights
used for combining the distances.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
tabled1.dat 437 563 Gaia DR3 data used in the paper for identified
nearby stars for each YHG and YSG
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See also:
I/355 : Gaia DR3 Part 1. Main source (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
I/352 : Distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia EDR3 (Bailer-Jones+, 2021)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tabled1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 14 A14 --- YSG/YHG YSG/YHG corresponding to the star
(correspysgyhg)
16- 34 I19 --- GaiaDR3 Gaia DR3 source id (SOURCE_ID)
36- 54 F19.15 deg RAdeg Gaia DR3 right ascension (ICRS)
at Ep=2016.0 (ra)
56- 74 F19.15 deg DEdeg Gaia DR3 declination (ICRS)
at Ep=2016.0 (dec)
76- 93 F18.16 mas plx Gaia DR3 parallax (parallax)
95-112 F18.16 mas e_plx Gaia DR3 parallax error (parallax_error)
114-132 F19.16 mas/yr pmRA Gaia DR3 proper motion ra (pmra)
134-151 F18.16 mas/yr e_pmRA Gaia DR3 proper motion ra error (pmra_error)
153-171 F19.16 mas/yr pmDE Gaia DR3 proper motion dec (pmdec)
173-190 F18.16 mas/yr e_pmDE Gaia DR3 proper motion dec error
(pmdec_error)
192-209 F18.15 mag Gmag Gaia DR3 G magnitude (photgmean_mag)
211-228 F18.16 um-1 nueff ?=- Gaia DR3 nu eff (nueffusedinas)
230-247 F18.16 um-1 pscol ?=- Gaia DR3 pseudocolour (pseudocolour)
249-267 F19.15 deg ELAT Gaia DR3 ecliptic latitude (ecl_lat)
269-270 I2 --- Solved Gaia DR3 astrometric params solved
(astrometric_param)
272-281 F10.5 pc rgeo Distance from Bailer-Jones et al.,
2021AJ....161..147B 2021AJ....161..147B. Cat. I/352 (rgeo)
283-292 F10.5 pc b_rgeo Low distance Bailer-Jones et al.,
2021AJ....161..147B 2021AJ....161..147B. Cat. I/352 (b_rgeo)
294-303 F10.5 pc B_rgeo High distance Bailer-Jones et al.,
2021AJ....161..147B 2021AJ....161..147B. Cat. I/352 (B_rgeo)
305-324 F20.17 mas/yr pmRAcorr Corrected proper motion ra (pmra_corr)
326-345 F20.17 mas/yr pmDEcorr Corrected proper motion dec (pmdec_corr)
347-355 F9.6 mas zpt Parallax zero point (Lindegren et al.,
2021A&A...649A...4L 2021A&A...649A...4L) (zpt)
357-375 F19.17 mas plxcorr Zero point corrected parallax (plx_corr)
377-394 F18.16 --- kvalue Constant k from Maiz Apellaniz et al.,
2021A&A...649A..13M 2021A&A...649A..13M (k_value)
396-415 F20.18 mas eExtplx Parallax external uncertainty
(plxextuncert)
417-437 F21.19 --- Weight weight for combining parallaxes (weight)
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Acknowledgements:
Anni Kasikov anni.kasikov(at)ut.ee
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 04-Feb-2026