The Perseus OB2 Superbubble and the Taurus-Auriga-California-Perseus Molecular Cloud Loop

Abstract Located at a distance of about 300 pc, Perseus OB2 (or Per~OB2 for short) is one of the major OB associations in the solar vicinity\cite{Zeeuw99,Belikov2002}, which has blown a supershell with a diameter of about 15 degree seen in the atomic hydrogen line surveys\cite{Sancisi1974,Heiles1984,Hartmann1997}. It was long considered that stellar feedback from the Per~OB2 association had formed a superbubble that swept up the surrounding interstellar medium into the observed supershell\cite{Bally2008}. Here we report the three-dimensional structure of the Per~OB2 superbubble, based on wide-field atomic hydrogen and molecular gas (traced by CO) surveys. The measured diameter of the superbubble is roughly 330 pc. Multiple atomic hydrogen shells/loops with expansion velocities of about 10 km/s are revealed in the superbubble, suggesting a complicated evolution history of the superbubble. Furthermore, the inspections of the morphology, kinematics and timescale of the Taurus-Auriga, California, and Perseus molecular clouds shows that the cloud complex is a super molecular cloud loop circling around and co-expanding with the Per~OB2 superbubble. We conclude that the Taurus-Auriga-California-Perseus loop, the largest star-forming molecular cloud complex in the solar neighborhood, is formed from the feedback of the Per~OB2 superbubble.