Discovery of new Milky Way star cluster candidates in the 2MASS Point Source Catalog IV. Follow-up observations of cluster candidates in the Galactic plane

• Main Authors: Ivanov, V. D, Borissova, J, Bresolin, F, Pessev, P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-02-2005
• Subjects: Physics - Astrophysics of Galaxies; Physics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics; Physics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics; Physics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena; Physics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics; Physics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0502015

Nearly 500 cluster candidates have been reported by searches based on the new
all-sky near infrared surveys. The true nature of the majority of these objects
is still unknown. This project aims to estimate the physical parameters of some
of the candidates in order to use them as probes of the obscured star formation
in the Milky Way.
Here we report deep near infrared observations of four objects, discovered by
our search based on the 2MASS Point Source Catalog (Ivanov et al. 2002;
Borissova et al. 2003). CC04 appears to be a few million year old cluster. We
estimate its distance and extinction, and set a limit on the total mass. CC08
contains red supergiants, indicating a slightly older age of about 7-10 Myr.
The suspected cluster nature of CC13 was not confirmed. CC14 appears to be an
interesting candidate with double-tail-like morphology but our data doesn't
allow us to derive a firm conclusion about the nature of this object.
We found no supermassive star clusters similar to the Arches or the
Quintuplet (Mtot >= 10**4 Msolar) among the dozen confirmed clusters studied so
far in this series of papers, indicating that such objects are not common in
the Milky Way.