Image Details

Choose export citation format:

Evidence Against Primordial Mass Segregation in Young Open Clusters: A Bayesian Multiscale Analysis of 3881 Gaia DR3 Clusters

  • Authors: Su Zhang

Su Zhang 2026 The Astronomical Journal 171 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 3.

Dependence of spatial mass segregation (Q1) on total cluster mass. Blue points represent young clusters (<100 Myr) and red points represent old clusters (>1 Gyr). Lines show the linear regression fits. There is no strong evidence that massive clusters are born more segregated than low-mass clusters, as the vast majority of young clusters hover closely around the random baseline of 0.25. The slight positive tilt in the regression line is an artifact driven by only three extreme outliers (representing <5% of the 66 massive clusters), confirming that primordial segregation is not a universal outcome.

Other Images in This Article
Copyright and Terms & Conditions

Additional terms of reuse