Revisiting the Cygnus OB associations

We characterize the properties of the new associations, including their velocity dispersions and total stellar masses, all of which are consistent with typical values for OB associations. We search for evidence of expansion and find that all are expanding, albeit anistropically, with stronger and more significant expansion in the direction of Galactic longitude. We also identify two large-scale (160pc and 25km/s) kinematic expansion patterns across the Cygnus region, each including three of our new associations, and attribute this to the effects of feedback from a previous generation of stars.

This work highlights the need to revisit the existence and membership of the historical OB associations, if they are to be used to study their properties and dynamics.