Improving the open cluster census

Context. The census of open clusters has exploded in size thanks to data from the Gaia satellite. However, it is likely that many of these reported clusters are not gravitationally bound, making the open cluster census impractical for many scientific applications. Aims. We aim to test different physically motivated methods for distinguishing between bound and unbound clusters, using them to create a cleaned star cluster catalogue. Methods. We derived completeness-corrected photometric masses for 6956 clusters from our earlier work. Then, we used these masses to compute the size of the Roche surface of these clusters (their Jacobi radius) and distinguish between bound and unbound clusters. Results. We find that…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• ES
  European Space Agency
• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

  Awards: 138713538, SFB 881