Search for and Characterization of Galactic Open Clusters with 2MASS

Abstract

We have developed a star-counting algorithm and tested it on the 2MASS star catalog to search for density enhancements significantly above the field in Galactic latitude $|b|<50^{\circ}$. Nearly 500 open clusters are "rediscovered", along with 89 globular clusters, 35 galaxies, 55 galaxy clusters, 11 H II regions, and 4 regions contaminated by nearby bright stars. Fifty-two density enhancement regions remain unaccounted for. Here we present one such candidate HDG\,01, $(\ell, b)=(144.9038, 0.4338)$ which has an angular size of 3', a distance of 1.5 kpc, hence a physical size of 3.7 pc. Due to some nebulous shape, this star cluster should be an young-aged ($\le 10$ Myr).