Young star clusters and the structure of the second Galactic quadrant

MOLINA LERA, J A; BAUME, G; GAMEN, R

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2018 vol. 480 p. 2386 - 2404

0035-8711

Aiming to improve the knowledge of the Galactic structure in the secondGalactic quadrant, we selected 10 young open clusters from a sample ofmore than 200 covered by the SDSS. Our study was based on a photometricdata set provided by SDSS and APASS in the visible and by 2MASS and WISEin the infrared. We also carried out spectroscopic observations withGMOS/GEMINI and made use of spectroscopic information available in theliterature. The analysis was performed with a suite of tools developedby us to systematically determine the main parameters of the studiedclusters, and to identify possible pre-main-sequence populations. Weobtained novel parameters and found that the studied clusters arescattered at distances ranging from 1.7 to 8.8 kpc, covering threespiral arms. In particular, we located two of the clusters over the`Outer Arm´ and other two probably belong to the more distant `New Arm´.Hence, it was possible to get a better picture of the structure of theouter part of the Galaxy. We also obtained traces of coeval starformation processes in all of the selected clusters with apre-main-sequence population and identified young stellar objectcandidates in one of them. Regarding the most massive members of theclusters, we discovered 14 B-type stars, eight of them earlier than B3and another one was identified as a Be star.