Stellar rotation and binaries in open clusters with Gaia Data Release 3

Pancino, E, Reggiani, E, Marinoni, S, Marrese, PM, Alvarez Garay, D, Avdeeva, A, Echeveste, M, Leitinger, E, Nedhath, S, Rani, S, Sanna, N, Saracino, S, Steinbauer, L, Turchi, A, Jadhav, VV, Kamann, S ORCID: 0000-0001-6604-0505 and Rainer, M (2026) Stellar rotation and binaries in open clusters with Gaia Data Release 3. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 711. ISSN 0004-6361

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Abstract

Context. Stellar rotation is a fundamental ingredient in shaping the evolution of stars, and it can also be used to trace past stellar interactions. Yet, systematic studies of stellar rotation in large samples of stars belonging to different populations have only recently been made possible, thanks to spectroscopic surveys.

Aims. We used the catalogue of rotational broadening and rotation periods released with Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3). We focused on open clusters to study the rotational behavior of several interesting populations including, among others, blue stragglers and extended main-sequence turnoffs (eMSTOs).

Methods. We used literature lists of almost a million member stars in several thousand open clusters in the Milky Way. We collect properties of stars and clusters from large surveys, including Gaia, and from various literature sources. We included a comprehensive collection of known variables and binary stars from various databases. We manually selected (exotic) stellar populations from the color–magnitude diagrams of individual clusters and studied their rotational properties.

Results. Our catalog contains more than 44 000 rotationally characterized stars, almost 57 000 variables (excluding binaries), and more than 22 000 binary stars. We find several interesting results, including a few hundred new blue stragglers and several fast-rotating red giants, and we increased the number of clusters with an eMSTO to 96. We discovered that most clusters more massive than 103 M⊙ display an eMSTO. We present a new parametrization of the number of blue stragglers as a function of cluster mass and age. We find that the percentage of binary stars in the equal-mass binary sequence and in the main sequence are similar.

Conclusions. We present the first large-scale statistical exploration of stellar rotation in open clusters, which already yielded new interesting results and can be used as the basis for several detailed follow-up studies.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	surveys; binaries: general; stars: rotation; stars: variables: general; open clusters and associations: general; 5101 Astronomical Sciences; 51 Physical Sciences; 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences; Astronomy & Astrophysics; 5101 Astronomical sciences; 5107 Particle and high energy physics; 5109 Space sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	EDP Sciences
Date of acceptance:	30 April 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	17 July 2026
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2026 14:20
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2026 14:20
DOI or ID number:	10.1051/0004-6361/202659745
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29029

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