A&A 407, 527-539 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20030831

A study of the two northern open clusters NGC 1582 and NGC 1663

G. Baume^{1, 2}, S. Villanova¹ and G. Carraro<sup>1

1</sup>  Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova, Vicolo Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padova, Italy
²  Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas de la UNLP, IALP-CONICET, Paseo del Bosque s/n, La Plata, Argentina

(Received 25 February 2003 / Accepted 16 May 2003 )

Abstract
We present CCD UBV(I) observations obtained in the field of the previously unstudied northern open clusters NGC 1582 and NGC 1663. For the former, we also provide high-resolution spectra of the brightest stars and complement our data with Two-Micron All-Sky-Survey (2MASS) near-infrared photometry and with astrometric data from the Tycho-2 catalog. From the analysis of all these data, we argue that NGC 1582 is a very poor, quite large and heavily contaminated open cluster. It turns out to have a reddening , to be situated  pc from the Sun and to have an age of  Myr. On the other hand, we were not able to unambiguously clarify the nature of NGC 1663. By assuming it is a real cluster and from the analysis of its photometric diagrams, we found a color excess value E_B-V = 0.20, an intermediate age value (~ 2000 Myr) and a distance of about 700 pc. The distribution of the stars in the region however suggests we are probably facing an open cluster remnant. As an additional result, we obtained aperture photometry of three previously unclassified galaxies placed in the field of NGC 1663 and performed a preliminary morphological classification of them.

Key words: Galaxy: open clusters and associations: individual: NGC 1582 and NGC 1663 -- open clusters and associations: general

Offprint request: G. Baume, baume@pd.astro.it

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