On the physical nature of globular cluster candidates in the Milky Way bulge

ANDRÉS E. PIATTI

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 477 p. 2164 - 2172

0035-8711

We present results from 2MASS JKs photometry on the physical reality of recentlyreported globular cluster (GC) candidates in the Milky Way (MW) bulge. We reliedour analysis on photometric membership probabilities that allowed us to distinguishreal stellar aggregates from the composite field star population. When building colour-magnitude diagrams and stellar density maps for stars at different membership probability levels, the genuine GC candidate populations are clearly highlighted. We thenused the tip of the red giant branch (RGB) as distance estimator, resulting heliocentric distances that place many of the objects in regions near of the MW bulge whereno GC had been previously recognised. Some few GC candidates resulted to be MWhalo/disc objects.Metallicities estimated from the standard RGB method arein agreement with the values expected according to the position of the GCcandidates in the Galaxy. We finally derived from the first time their structuralparameters. We found that the studied objects have core, half-light and tidalradii in the ranges spanned by the population of known MW GCs. Their internal dynamical evolutionary stages will be described properly when theirmasses are estimated.