---
author:
- Siegfried Röser
- Elena Schilbach
bibliography:
- 'mybib.bib'
date: 'Received 20 March 2019; accepted 16 April 2019.'
title: 'Praesepe (NGC 2632) and its tidal tails.'
---

[Within a 400 pc sphere around the Sun, we search for Praesepe’s tidal tails in the Gaia DR2 dataset.]{} [We used a modified convergent-point method to find stars with space velocities close to the space velocity of the Praesepe cluster.]{} [We find a clear indication for the existence of Praesepe’s tidal tails, both extending up to 165 pc from the centre of the cluster. A total of 1393 stars populate the cluster and its tails, giving a total mass of 794 M$_\odot$. We determined a tidal radius of 10.77 pc for the cluster and a tidal mass of 483 M$_\odot$. The corresponding half-mass radius is 4.8 pc. We also found clear indication for mass segregation in the cluster. The tidal tails outside 2 tidal radii are populated by 389 stars. The total contamination of our sample by field stars lies between 50 to 100 stars or 3.6 to 7.2$\%$. We used an astrometrically and photometrically clean sub-sample of Gaia DR2 which makes our Praesepe sample incomplete beyond $M_G \approx$ 12.0 mag, 