Optical linear polarization study towards Czernik 3 open cluster at different spatial scales

Abstract

We present the optical linear polarization observation of stars towards the core of the Czernik 3 cluster in the Sloan i-band. The data were obtained using the EMPOL instrument on the 1.2 m telescope at Mount Abu Observatory. We study the dust distribution towards this cluster by combining the results from our polarization observations with the data from Gaia EDR3, WISE, and the HI, ${}^{12}$CO surveys. In addition, we use the polarimetric data of previously studied clusters within 15${}^{\circ }$ of Czernik 3 to understand the large scale dust distribution. The observational results of Czernik 3 show a large range in the degree of polarization, indicating that the dust is not uniformly distributed over the plane of the sky, even on a small scale. The distance to the Czernik 3 is constrained to $3.6\pm 0.8$ kpc using the member stars in the core region identified from Gaia EDR3 astrometry. This makes it one of the most distant clusters observed for optical polarization so far. The variation of observed degree of polarization and extinction towards this cluster direction suggests the presence of at least two dust layers along this line of sight at distances of $\sim 1$ kpc and $\sim 3.4$ kpc. There is an indication of the presence of dust in the centre of the cluster, as seen from an increase in the degree of polarization and WISE W4 flux. The large scale distribution of dust reveals the presence of a region of low dust content between the local arm and the Perseus arm.

22 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables, Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal

References in corpus (18)

• Estimating distances from parallaxes. V: Geometric and photogeometric distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3
• HI4PI: A full-sky HI survey based on EBHIS and GASS
• Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star Forming Regions: VI. Galactic Structure, Fundamental Parameters and Non-Circular Motions
• Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc
• A Compendium of Distances to Molecular Clouds in the Star Formation Handbook
• The VISTA ZYJHKs Photometric System: Calibration from 2MASS
• On the Milky Way spiral arms from open clusters in Gaia EDR3
• Identification of Young Stellar Object candidates in the $Gaia$ DR2 x AllWISE catalogue with machine learning methods
• Evolution of the local spiral structure of the Milky Way revealed by open clusters
• Optical polarimetric study of open clusters: Distribution of Interstellar matter towards NGC 654
• The disintegrating old open cluster Czernik 3
• Broad Band Optical Polarimetric Study of IC 1805
• Modelling interstellar extinction and polarization with spheroidal grains
• The Galactic Plane Infrared Polarization Survey (GPIPS): Data Release 4
• Multi-colour photometry and Gaia EDR3 astrometry of two couples of binary clusters (NGC 5617 and Trumpler 22) and (NGC 3293 and NGC 3324)
• Optical Linear Polarization toward the Open Star Cluster Casado Alessi 1
• Broadband Linear Polarization in the Region of the Open Star Cluster NGC 1817
• EMPOL: an EMCCD based optical imaging polarimeter

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Linear polarization study of open clusters towards the anticenter direction: Signature of the spiral arms