Letter to the Editor

Discovery of new Milky Way star clusters candidates in the 2MASS point source catalog

¹ European Southern Observatory, Ave. Alonso de Cordova 3107, Casilla 19, Santiago 19001, Chile
² Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Isaac Newton Institute of Chile, Bulgarian Branch, 72 Tsarigradsko Chaussèe, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: jura@haemimont.bg
³ Department of Astronomy, Sofia University, Bulgaria, and Isaac Newton Institute of Chile, Bulgarian Branch, 5 James Bourchier, 1164 Sofia, Bulgaria e-mail: pessev;givanov;rkurtev@phys.uni-sofia.bg

Corresponding author: V. D. Ivanov, vivanov@eso.org

Received: 15 July 2002
Accepted: 20 August 2002

Abstract

A systematic search of the 2MASS point source catalog, covering 47% of the sky, was carried out aiming to reveal any hidden globular clusters in our Galaxy. Eight new star clusters were discovered by a search algorithm based on finding peaks in the apparent stellar surface density, and a visual inspection of their vicinities yielded additional two. They all are concentrated toward the Galactic plane and are hidden behind up to  mag which accounts for their late discovery. The majority of new clusters are associated with Hii regions or unidentified IRAS sources suggesting that they are young, probably similar to Arches or open clusters. Only one candidate has morphology similar to a globular cluster and the verification of its nature will require deeper observations with higher angular resolution than the 2MASS data.