A method of open cluster membership determination

Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory, Georgian Academy of Sciences, Georgia e-mail: todua@hotmail.com

Received: 18 February 2004
Accepted: 30 July 2005

Abstract

A new method for the determination of open cluster membership based on a cumulative effect is proposed. In the field of a plate the relative x and y coordinate positions of each star with respect to all the other stars are added. The procedure is carried out for two epochs t₁ and t₂ separately, then one sum is subtracted from another. For a field star the differences in its relative coordinate positions of two epochs will be accumulated. For a cluster star, on the contrary, the changes in relative positions of cluster members at t₁ and t₂ will be very small. On the histogram of sums the cluster stars will gather to the left of the diagram, while the field stars will form a tail to the right. The procedure allows us to efficiently discriminate one group from another. The greater the distance between t₁ and t₂ and the more cluster stars present, the greater is the effect. The accumulation method does not require reference stars, determination of centroids and modelling the distribution of field stars, necessary in traditional methods. By the proposed method 240 open clusters have been processed, including stars up to . The membership probabilities have been calculated and compared to those obtained by the most commonly used Vasilevskis-Sanders method. The similarity of the results acquired the two different approaches is satisfactory for the majority of clusters.