The discovery of a low-mass, pre-main-sequence stellar association around Velorum

We report the serendipitous discovery of a population of low-mass, pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars in the direction of the Wolf-Rayet/O-star binary system γ2 Vel and the Vela OB2 association. We argue that γ2 Vel and the low-mass stars are truly associated and approximately coeval, and that both are at distances between 360 and 490 pc, disagreeing at the 2σ level with the recent Hipparcos parallax of γ2 Vel, but consistent with older distance estimates. Our results clearly have implications for the physical parameters of the γ2 Vel system, but also offer an exciting opportunity to investigate the influence of high-mass stars on the mass function and circumstellar disc lifetimes of their lower mass PMS siblings.