A catalogue of 74 new open clusters found in Gaia Data-Release 2

TL;DR

This paper uses Gaia DR2 data and machine learning to identify 74 new open star clusters in the Milky Way, providing their properties and confirming their consistency with known clusters.

Contribution

Introduces an unsupervised machine learning approach to discover new open clusters in Gaia DR2 data, expanding the catalog of known clusters.

Findings

74 new open cluster candidates identified

Properties consistent with previously known clusters

Provides detailed positional and physical data for each candidate

Abstract

Based on astrometric data from Gaia DR2, we employ an unsupervised machine learning method to blindly search for open star clusters in the Milky Way within the Galactic latitude range of |b| < 20 degrees. In addition to 2,080 known clusters, 74 new open cluster candidates are found. In this work, we present the positions, apparent radii, parallaxes, proper motions and member stars of these candidates (https://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/vizier.submit//new_OC/). Meanwhile, to obtain the physical parameters of each candidate cluster, stellar isochrones are fit to the photometric data. The results show that the apparent radii and the observed proper motion dispersions of these new candidates are consistent with those of open clusters previously identified in Gaia DR2.