What Caused the Ejection of Mu Columbae and AE Aurigae from Orion?

[Astronuc]

I was listening to the regional NPR station yesterday and hear a brief discussion of two binary systems.

http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2009-12-26

The two brightest stars in Columba are Alpha and Beta Columbae. They're a bit fainter than most of the stars of the Big Dipper. Alpha Columbae is a blue star that's about 260 light-years from Earth. Orange Beta Columbae is only about a third as far.

The most famous star in Columba, however, is a still-fainter member of the constellation: Mu Columbae, a massive star that's racing away from Orion. It's 1300 light-years away. Mu Columbae probably was thrown out of the Orion Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that has thousands of newborn stars.

According to one scenario, Mu Columbae and another massive star orbited each other as a binary in Orion. But the system encountered another binary. One star in that system stole Mu Columbae's partner, ejecting its own partner to the north, where it's racing through the constellation Auriga. The encounter sent Mu Columbae hurtling to the south, . . . .

Is this common? Is it plausible? I presume that some how the velocity of Mu Columbae and the other star traveling 'north' can be traced back to some neighborhood.

http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/col-t.html

Mu Columbae is a "runaway star" that was ejected from near Orion's Trapezium Cluster 2.5 million years ago along with Auriga's AE Aurigae as a result of a binary interaction that also involved Na'ir al Saif (Iota Orionis).

A different scenario - http://jumk.de/astronomie/big-stars/mu-columbae.shtml

The big blue star once was the partner of AE Aurigae. The stars came into existence together in the Orion Nebula and since then drift away with high speed. Reason for this could have been a supernova explosion a long time ago.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

@Astronuc did you find any more insight on this topic?