628 new open clusters found with OCfinder

DOI

The improvements in the precision of the published data in Gaia EDR3 with respect to Gaia DR2, particularly for parallaxes and proper motions, offer the opportunity to increase the number of known open clusters in the Milky Way by detecting farther and fainter objects that have so far go unnoticed. Our aim is to keep completing the open cluster census in the Milky Way with the detection of new stellar groups in the Galactic disc. We use Gaia EDR3 up to magnitude G=18mag, increasing in one unit the magnitude limit and therefore the search volume explored in our previous studies. We use the OCfinder method to search for new open clusters in Gaia EDR3 using a Big Data environment. As a first step, OCfinder identifies stellar statistical overdensities in the five dimensional astrometric space (position, parallax and proper motions) using the DBSCAN clustering algorithm. Then, these overdensities are classified into random statistical overdensities or real physical open clusters using a deep artificial neural network trained on well-characterised G, G_BP_-G_RP_ colour-magnitude diagrams. We report the discovery of 628 new open clusters within the Galactic disc, most of them located beyond 1 kpc from the Sun. From the estimation of ages, distances and line-of-sight extinctions of these open clusters, we see that young clusters align following the Galactic spiral arms while older ones are dispersed in the Galactic disc. Furthermore, we find that most open clusters are located at low Galactic altitudes with the exception of a few groups older than 1Gyr. We show the success of the OCfinder method leading to the discovery of a total of 1310 open clusters (joining the discoveries here with the previous ones based on Gaia DR2), which represents almost 50% of the know population. Our ability to perform big data searches on a large volume of the Galactic disc, together with the higher precision in Gaia EDR3, enable us to keep completing the census with the discovery of new open clusters.

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/661/A118/table1 (Mean parameters for the reported UBC clusters)

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/661/A118/table2 (Members for the reported UBC clusters)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.36610118
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/661/A118
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/661/A118
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/661/A118
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/661/A118
Provenance
Creator Castro-Ginard A.; Jordi C.; Luri X.; Cantat-Gaudin T.; Carrasco; J.M.,Casamiquela L.; Anders F.; Balaguer-Nunez L.; Badia R.M.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2022
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Exoplanet Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy