Record Detail

Our knowledge of stellar evolution and of the
structure and chemical evolution of the Galactic disk largely
builds on the study of open star clusters. Because of their
crucial role in these relevant topics, large homogeneous cat-
alogues of open cluster parameters are highly desirable. Al-
though efforts have been made to develop automatic tools
to analyse large numbers of clusters, the results obtained so
far vary from study to study, and sometimes are very con-
tradictory when compared to dedicated studies of individual
clusters. In this work we highlight the common causes of
these discrepancies for some open clusters, and show that at
present dedicated studies yield a much better assessment of
the nature of star clusters, even in the absence of ideal data-
sets. We make use of deep, wide-field, multi-colour photom-
etry to discuss the nature of six strategically selected open
star clusters: Trumpler 22, Lynga 6, Hogg 19, Hogg 21, Pis-
mis 10 and Pismis 14. We have precisely derived their ba-
sic parameters by means of a combination of star counts
and photometric diagrams. Trumpler 22 and Lynga 6 are in-
cluded in our study because they are widely known, and thus
provided a check of our data and methodology. The remain-
ing four clusters are very poorly known, and their available
parameters have been obtained using automatic tools only.
B G. Carraro
giovanni.carraro@unipd.it
1 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di
Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 3, 35122, Padova, Italy
2 Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas (UNLP),
Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata (CONICET, UNLP), Paseo
del Bosque s/n, La Plata, Argentina
3 Astronomical Observatory, Ural Federal University, Mira str. 19,
Ekaterinburg, 620002, Russia
4 Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Camino El
Observatorio 1515, Santiago, Chile
Our results are in some cases in severe disagreement with
those from automatic surveys.