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) gravitati ...

. The name indicates this stellar association is located in the area of the Camelopardalis constellation 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 lifet ...

s. The association is ~ distant from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

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

Orion Arm The Orion Arm is a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy that is across and approximately in length, containing the Solar System, including Earth. It is also referred to by its full name, the Orion–Cygnus Arm, as well as Local Arm, Orion ...

of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

galaxy and lies outside the traditional

Gould Belt The Gould Belt is a local, partial ring of stars in the Milky Way, about 3,000 light-years long, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees. It contains many O- and B-type stars, amounting to the nearest star-forming regi ...

. 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 NGC 1502 is a young open cluster of approximately 60 stars in the constellation Camelopardalis, discovered by William Herschel on November 3, 1787. It has a visual magnitude of 6.0 and thus is dimly visible to the naked eye. This cluster is loc ...

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 A B-type main-sequence star (B V) is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type B and luminosity class V. These stars have from 2 to 16 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 K. B-type star ...

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

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 , 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 , 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