A Blind All-sky Search for Star Clusters in Gaia EDR3: 886 Clusters within 1.2 kpc of the Sun

TL;DR

This study used Gaia EDR3 data to identify 886 nearby star clusters, including 270 new ones, significantly expanding the catalog of clusters especially at high Galactic latitudes, and providing detailed physical parameters for these clusters.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive all-sky search for star clusters within 1.2 kpc using Gaia EDR3, discovering 270 new clusters and providing their physical parameters for the first time.

Findings

Identified 886 star clusters within 1.2 kpc, including 270 new candidates.

Discovered 46 new clusters at high Galactic latitudes, tripling known clusters in those regions.

Provided physical parameters and member stars for the newly identified clusters.

Abstract

Although previous searches for star clusters have been very successful, many clusters are likely still omitted, especially at high Galactic latitude regions. In this work, based on the astrometry of Gaia EDR3, we searched nearby (parallax > 0.8 mas) all-sky regions, obtaining 886 star clusters, of which 270 candidates have not been cataloged before. At the same time, we have presented the physical parameters of the clusters by fitting theoretical isochrones to their optical magnitudes. More halo members and expanding structures in many star clusters were also found. Most of the new objects are young clusters that are less than 100 million years old. Our work greatly increased the sample size and physical parameters of star clusters in the solar neighborhood, in particular, 46 clusters are newly found with |b| > 20 deg, which represents an increase of nearly three fold of cluster numbers at high Galactic latitude regions. The cluster parameters and member stars are available at CDS via https://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/ftp/vizier.submit//hezh22b/, and the cluster figure sets are available via https://doi.org/10.12149/101133.