The Hipparcos mission and galactic open clusters

A.E. Piskunov1,2,3, N.V. Kharchenko1,2,4, S.Roser2 , E. Schilbach2 and R.-D. Scholz1
1 Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, D­14482 Potsdam, Germany
2 Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, M¨ nchhofstraße 12-14, D­69120 Heidelberg, Germany
3 Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Acad. Sci., 48 Pyatnitskaya Str., 109017 Moscow, Russia
4 Main Astronomical Observatory, 27 Academica Zabolotnogo Str., 03680 Kiev, Ukraine

Abstract. We present some results of a study of the galactic open cluster population. This study is based on the all-sky catalogue ASCC-2.5 compiled from Tycho-2, Hipparcos and other catalogues. Screening the ASCC-2.5 resulted in the identification of 520 known clusters and the detection of 130 new ones. A uniform combined kinematic-photometric cluster membership was established for these objects and new uniform scales of cluster structure (angular sizes), kinematics (average proper motions and radial velocities), photometry (reddening and distance) and evolution (age) were established. Two parts of our more extended open cluster population study (some details on the spatial and age distributions of open clusters) are presented here.

Keywords: Open clusters and associations: general

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