The Maximum Age of Trapezium Systems

Abstract

Allen et al. (1977) compiled a catalog of 968 possible Trapezium systems by scanning the IDS for systems of three or more stars whose relative separations within the system did not exceed a factor of 3. We explored whether a sample of 265 of those systems were actually physical systems. We used CCD pictures in U, B, and V magnitudes to obtain evidence for common proper motions and consistent color-magnitude and color-color diagrams. We also obtained a spectral classification for at least one star in each system to get the space reddening and distance.