Pleiades cluster membership probabilities

The distribution of the cluster members proper motions and the distribution of contaminants in the full multidimensional astro-photometric space is modelled with a mixture-of-Gaussians likelihood. We analyse several representation spaces composed of the proper motions plus a subset of the available magnitudes and colour indices. We select two prominent representation spaces composed of variables selected using feature relevance determination techniques based in Random Forests, and analyse the resulting samples of high probability candidates.

We consistently find lists of high probability (p>0.9975) candidates with ~1000 sources, 4 to 5 times more than obtained in the most recent astro-photometric studies of the cluster. Multidimensional data sets require statistically sound multivariate analysis techniques to fully exploit their scientific information content. Proper motions in particular are, as expected, critical for the correct separation of contaminants.

The methodology presented here is ready for application in data sets that include more dimensions, such as radial and/or rotational velocities, spectral indices, and variability.