Young nearby open clusters and their luminosity functions^⋆

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ Vía Láctea, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
e-mail: mzerjal@iac.es
² Universidad de La Laguna, Departamento de Astrofísica, Avenida Astrofísico Francisco Sánchez, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³ Dpto. Física Aplicada, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, C/ Doctor Fleming, 30202 Cartagena, Murcia, Spain
⁴ Departamento de Inteligencia Artificial, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), C/ Juan del Rosal 16, 28040 Madrid, Spain
⁵ Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, C/ de Serrano 117, 28006 Madrid, Spain

Received: 17 January 2023
Accepted: 7 July 2023

Abstract

Context. Open clusters are groups of coeval stars sharing properties such as distance and metallicity, and they are key to understanding stellar evolution.

Aims. Our main goal is to study the evolution of open clusters with a special focus on the universality of the luminosity function.

Methods. We applied an upgraded version of the convergent point technique on about 50 open clusters. The selection of cluster members was based purely on the exquisite astrometry of the Gaia DR3 and HIPPARCOS catalogues in the five-dimensional or full six-dimensional space.

Results. We present updated lists of bona fide members of ∼50 open clusters within 500 pc and younger than 1 Gyr, exploiting the full depth of the third Gaia data release complemented by HIPPARCOS at the bright end, excluding regions in the Galactic plane. Our catalogues also are complemented by optical and infrared photometry from the major large-scale public surveys. All the data will be made available on a dedicated webpage with interactive plots and a direct link to Aladin and Vizier hosted at the Centre de Données de Strasbourg. We derived luminosity functions for all bound clusters and compared them in three age groups of ∼50 Myr, ∼150 Myr, and ∼600 Myr, discussing similarities and differences to constrain their dynamical evolution.

Conclusions. Luminosity functions of clusters at 50 Myr are more likely similar to each other and show a greater degree of similarity than older clusters. We explain this observation with the universal luminosity function within the volume of our sample (500 pc). Luminosity functions of clusters with ages similar to the Pleiades or Hyades are more diverse, perhaps due to internal dynamical evolution, but more work is needed to provide additional evidence.