Towards a census of the Galactic anticentre star clusters: colour-magnitude diagram and structural analyses of a sample of 50 objects

TL;DR

This study analyzes 50 overdensities towards the Galactic anticentre to identify and characterize star clusters, discovering 16 genuine clusters, including 9 new ones, and providing their astrophysical parameters using colour-magnitude diagrams and density profiles.

Contribution

It provides a systematic approach to classify and derive parameters for star cluster candidates in the Galactic anticentre, including the discovery of new open clusters.

Findings

16 out of 50 overdensities are confirmed star clusters

9 are newly identified open clusters

Clusters range in age from 5 Myr to 1 Gyr and are located 1.28 to 5.78 kpc from the Sun

Abstract

In this work we investigate the nature of 50 overdensities from the catalogue of Froebrich, Scholz, and Raftery (FSR) projected towards the Galactic anticentre, in the sector 160{\deg} \leq \ell \leq 200{\deg}. The sample contains candidates with |b| \leq 20{\deg} classified by FSR as probable open cluster (OC) and labelled with quality flags 2 and 3. Our main purpose is to determine the nature of these OC candidates and the fraction of these objects that are unknown OCs, as well as to derive astrophysical parameters (age, reddening, distance, core and cluster radii) for the clusters and to investigate the relationship among parameters. The analysis is based on 2MASS J, (J-H), and (J-Ks) colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), and stellar radial density profiles (RDPs) built with decontamination tools. The tools are a field star decontamination algorithm, used to uncover the cluster's intrinsic CMD morphology, and colour-magnitude filters to isolate stars with a high probability of being cluster members. Out of the 50 objects, 16 (32%) are star clusters. We show that 9 (18%) overdensities are new OCs (FSR 735, FSR 807, FSR 812, FSR 826, FSR 852, FSR 904, FSR 941, FSR 953, and FSR 955) and 7 (14%) are previously studied or catalogued OCs (KKC1, FSR 795, Cz 22, FSR 828, FSR 856, Cz 24, and NGC 2234). These are OCs with ages in the range 5 Myr to 1 Gyr, at distances from the Sun 1.28 \precnapprox d_Sun(kpc) \precnapprox 5.78 and Galactocentric distances 8.5 R_GC(kpc) \precnapprox 12.9. We also derive parameters for the previously analysed OCs Cz 22 and NGC 2234. Five (10%) candidates are classified as uncertain cases, and the remaining objects are probable field fluctuations.