Studying the nature of runaway stars using Andromeda's massive stellar population.

Theory of the formation of massive stars remains incomplete, the question of the environments required have yet to be answered. An agreement on whether all massive stars must form in cluster type environments, or if isolated formation is viable has yet to be reached. This is further complicated by the presence of runaway stars, stellar objects which have been ejected from their host cluster. Studying the nature of these isolated runaway stars becomes paramount in the larger goal of developing a more comprehensive massive star formation theory. Creating a survey of runaway star candidates is possible thanks to Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury's UV and optical photometry, and the identified clusters from the Andromeda Project. A first glimpse into the data suggests large body of massive stars are 50 parsecs or more from the closest cluster and roughly half of the entire massive stellar population is found outside of defined cluster boundaries. Additional analysts shows a stark difference between the velocity dispersion of massive stars and appropriately young clusters, the stars exhibiting a inflated dispersion. Using this result in conjunction with artificial clusters and star populations, constrains on the percentage of expected runaway objects can be made.