INVESTIGADORES
PIATTI Andres Eduardo
artículos
Título:
Two highly reddened young open clusters located beyond the Sagittarius arm
Autor/es:
PIATTI, ANDRÉS E.; CLARIA OLMEDO, JUAN JOSÉ
Revista:
ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Referencias:
Año: 2002 vol. 388 p. 179 - 188
ISSN:
0004-6361
Resumen:
We present the results of CCD BVI Johnson-Cousins photometry down to V ~
19 mag in the regions of the unstudied stellar groups Pismis 23 and BH
222, both projected close to the direction towards the Galactic centre.
We measured V magnitude and B-V and V-I colours for a total of 928 stars
in fields of about 4arcmin x4arcmin . Pismis 23 is conclusively a
physical system, since a clear main sequence and other meaningful
features can be seen in the colour-magnitude diagrams. The reality of
this cluster is also supported by star counts carried out within and
outside the cluster field. For Pismis 23 we derive colour excesses
E(B-V) = 2.0 +/- 0.1 and E(V-I) = 2.6 +/- 0.1, a distance from the Sun
of 2.6 +/- 0.6 kpc (Z = -19 pc) and an age of 300 +/- 100 Myr (assuming
solar metal content). BH 222 appears to be a young open cluster formed
by a vertical main sequence and by a conspicuous group of luminous,
typically red supergiant stars. We derived for this cluster a colour
excess of E(V-I) = 2.4 +/- 0.2, a distance from the Sun of 6.0 +/- 2.7
kpc (Z = -46 pc) and an age of 60 +/- 30 Myr. The resulting reddening
and distance estimates place these two young objects among the most
reddened and distant open clusters known in the direction towards the
Galactic centre. They are located beyond the Sagittarius arm, close to
the direction where this arm probably bifurcates into two arms.