Camelopardalis OB1 (Cam OB1) is a group of young stars that share a common origin and a similar motion through space, but, as a whole, are no longer

gravitationally bound The gravitational binding energy of a system is the minimum energy which must be added to it in order for the system to cease being in a gravitationally bound state. A gravitationally bound system has a lower (''i.e.'', more negative) gravitatio ...

. The name indicates this

stellar association A stellar association is a very loose star cluster, looser than both open clusters and globular clusters. Stellar associations will normally contain from 10 to 100 or more visible stars. An association is primarily identified by commonalities in i ...

is located in the area of the

Camelopardalis Camelopardalis is a large but faint constellation of the northern sky representing a giraffe. The constellation was introduced in 1612 or 1613 by Petrus Plancius. Some older astronomy books give Camelopardalus or Camelopardus as alternative form ...

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

which includes a number of massive, short-lived

OB star OB stars are hot, massive stars of spectral types O or early-type B that form in loosely organized groups called OB associations. They are short lived, and thus do not move very far from where they formed within their life. During their life ...

s. The association is ~ distant from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, with members lying between and away. It is located on the edge of the local

Orion Arm The Orion Arm, also known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm, is a minor spiral arm within the Milky Way Galaxy spanning in width and extending roughly in length. This galactic structure encompasses the Solar System, including Earth. It is sometimes r ...

of the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

galaxy and lies outside the traditional

Gould Belt The Gould Belt is a local ring of stars in the Milky Way, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees, first reported by John Herschel and Benjamin Gould in the 19th century. It contains many O- and B-type stars, and many o ...

. The member stars were first classified as an association by Georg (Jiří) Alter, B. Y. Israel, and Jaroslav Ruprecht in 1966. The open cluster NGC 1502 is considered a member of Cam OB1. A second cluster in Cam OB1, G144.9+0.4, was identified in 2010 with 91 OB candidate stars. Excluding these clusters, two O-type and 35

B-type star In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the ...

s have been identified as members. Stars have been forming in the region of this association for the last 100 million years, and

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space—sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions"—Jeans instability, collapse and form stars. As a branch of astronomy, sta ...

is still in progress. It has a combined mass of ~5,000 times the

mass of the Sun The solar mass () is a frequently used unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is approximately equal to the mass of the Sun. It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies a ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , bibcode=1966csca.book.....A , year=1966 , title=Catalogue of star clusters and associations , last1=Alter , first1=Georg , last2=Israel , first2=B. Y. , last3=Ruprecht , first3=J. {{cite journal , title=Catalogue of Star Clusters and Associations, Supplement 1, Associations , display-authors=1 , last1=Ruprecht , first1=J. , last2=Balazs , first2=B. , last3=White , first3=R. E. , journal=Bulletin d'Information du Centre de Donnees Stellaires , volume=22 , page=132 , date=February 1982 , bibcode=1982BICDS..22..132R {{cite journal , title=Not all stars form in clusters - measuring the kinematics of OB associations with Gaia , last1=Ward , first1=Jacob L. , last2=Kruijssen , first2=J. M. Diederik , journal=Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , volume=475 , issue=4 , pages=5659–5676 , date=April 2018 , doi=10.1093/mnras/sty117 , doi-access=free , arxiv=1801.03938 , bibcode=2018MNRAS.475.5659W {{cite journal , title=Internal motions in OB associations with Gaia DR2 , last1=Melnik , first1=A. M. , last2=Dambis , first2=A. K. , journal=Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , volume=493 , issue=2 , pages=2339–2351 , date=April 2020 , doi=10.1093/mnras/staa454 , doi-access=free , arxiv=2002.05044 , bibcode=2020MNRAS.493.2339M {{cite journal , title=Young Stars in the Camelopardalis Dust and Molecular Clouds. I. The Cam OB1 Association , last1=Straižys , first1=V. , last2=Laugalys , first2=V. , journal=Baltic Astronomy , volume=16 , pages=167–182 , date=2007 , arxiv=0803.2461 , bibcode=2007BaltA..16..167S {{cite journal , title=The Stars in Camelopardalis OB1: Their Distance and Evolutionary History , last=Lyder , first=David A. , journal=The Astronomical Journal , volume=122 , issue=5 , pages=2634–2643 , date=November 2001 , doi=10.1086/323705 , bibcode=2001AJ....122.2634L , s2cid=120758592 , doi-access=free {{cite journal , title=Characterization of the Young Open Cluster G144.9+0.4 in the Camelopardalis OB1 Association , display-authors=1 , last1=Lin , first1=Chien-Cheng , last2=Chen , first2=W. P. , last3=Panwar , first3=Neelam , journal=The Astrophysical Journal , volume=775 , issue=2 , id=123 , pages=9 , date=October 2013 , doi=10.1088/0004-637X/775/2/123 , arxiv=1308.6162 , bibcode=2013ApJ...775..123L , s2cid=119232150 Stellar associations Camelopardalis