Open clusters and associations in the Gaia era

Abstract

Open clusters and associations are groups of young stars, respectively bound and unbound, that share the same origin and disperse over time into the galactic field. As such, their formation and evolution are the key to understand the origin and properties of galactic stellar populations. Moreover, since their members have about the same age, they are ideal laboratories to study the properties of young stars and constrain stellar evolution theories. In this contribution, I present our current knowledge on open clusters and associations. I focus on the methods used to derive the statistical properties (IMF, spatial distribution, IMF) of young stars and briefly discuss how they depend on the environment. I then describe how open clusters can be used as probes to investigate the structure, dynamics and chemical composition of the Milky Way. I conclude by presenting the Gaia mission and discuss how it will revolutionize this field of research.

To appear in EES2015 - Stellar Clusters: benchmarks of stellar physics and galactic evolution, Eds. E. Moraux, Y. Lebreton and C. Charbonnel, EAS Publications Series. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0911.1459, arXiv:1512.03658, arXiv:1512.06854, arXiv:1505.08027, arXiv:1307.0569, arXiv:astro-ph/0509804, arXiv:1511.08884, arXiv:1602.07121, arXiv:1104.2182 by other authors

References in corpus (35)

• A Spitzer Survey of Young Stellar Clusters within One Kiloparsec of the Sun: Cluster Core Extraction and Basic Structural Analysis
• Riding the Spiral Waves: Implications of Stellar Migration for the Properties of Galactic Disks
• The Milky Way's circular velocity curve between 4 and 14 kpc from APOGEE data
• Gas expulsion and the destruction of massive young clusters
• The Vertical Structure of the Outer Milky Way HI Disk
• Equilibrium Star Cluster Formation
• A systematic survey for infrared star clusters with |b|<20deg using 2MASS
• The evolution of the Galactic metallicity gradient from high-resolution spectroscopy of open clusters
• The Initial Mass Function of the Massive Star-forming Region NGC 3603 from Near-Infrared Adaptive Optics observations
• A test suite for quantitative comparison of hydrodynamics codes in astrophysics
• The distinction between star clusters and associations
• A VLBI Resolution of the Pleiades Distance Controversy
• A maximum likelihood method for fitting colour-magnitude diagrams
• Old open clusters in the outer Galactic disk
• Abundance gradients in the Milky Way for alpha elements, Iron peak elements, Barium, Lanthanum and Europium
• The secrets of the nearest starburst cluster: II. The present-day mass function in NGC 3603
• Why haven't loose globular clusters collapsed yet?
• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Perseus Spiral Arm
• Open clusters as key tracers of Galactic chemical evolution. III. Element abundances in Berkeley 20, Berkeley 29, Collinder 261, and Melotte 66
• Spiral structure in the outer Galactic disk. I. The Third Galactic Quadrant
• Brown dwarfs and very low mass stars in the Hyades cluster : a dynamically evolved mass function
• On the age heterogeneity of the Pleiades, Hyades and Sirius moving groups
• FLAMES spectroscopy of low-mass stars in the young clusters sigma Ori and lambda Ori
• IN-SYNC I: Homogeneous Stellar Parameters from High Resolution APOGEE Spectra for Thousands of Pre-main Sequence Star
• The Seven Sisters DANCe. I. Empirical isochrones, Luminosity and Mass Functions of the Pleiades cluster
• Kinematic structure in the young Sigma Orionis association
• A survey for low mass spectroscopic binary stars in the young clusters around sigma Orionis and lambda Orionis
• The lower mass function of the young open cluster Blanco 1: from 30 Mjup to 3 Mo
• Properties of Star Clusters - II: Scale Height Evolution of Clusters
• Testing the universality of the IMF with Bayesian statistics: young clusters
• Relations Between the Luminosity, Mass, and Age Distributions of Young Star Clusters
• The MLP Distribution: A Modified Lognormal Power-Law Model for the Stellar Initial Mass Function
• New Massive Binaries in the Cygnus OB2 Association
• Galactic Rotation Parameters from Data on Open Star Clusters
• The Impact of Chromospheric Activity on Observed Initial Mass Functions

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Clusters and mirages: cataloguing stellar aggregates in the Milky Way
• Multiplicity and clustering in Taurus star-forming region. I. Unexpected ultra-wide pairs of high-order multiplicity in Taurus
• Lithium depletion boundary, stellar associations, and Gaia
• A photometric and astrometric study of the open clusters NGC 1664 and NGC 6939
• Photometric study of the young open clusters IC 1442, King 21, and Trumpler 7
• Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey of Cygnus OB2 Complex -- I: Introduction, Photometry and Source Catalog
• A comprehensive photometric and kinematical characteristic of the newly discovered QCs clusters with Gaia EDR3
• A method for determining the radius of an open cluster from stellar proper motions
• Collision of Two Stellar Associations in the Nearby Gum Nebula