@article{6d0f843560a740619a341e944cee2b85,
title = "New galactic star clusters discovered in the VVV survey.Candidates projected on the inner disk and bulge",
abstract = "Context. VISTA Variables in the V{\'i}a L{\'a}ctea (VVV) is one of six ESO Public Surveys using the 4 meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The VVV survey covers the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the disk, and one of the principal objectives is to search for new star clusters within previously unreachable obscured parts of the Galaxy. Aims. The primary motivation behind this work is to discover and analyze obscured star clusters in the direction of the inner Galactic disk and bulge. Methods. Regions of the inner disk and bulge covered by the VVV survey were visually inspected using composite JHKS color images to select new cluster candidates on the basis of apparent overdensities. DR1, DR2, CASU, and point spread function photometry of 10 × 10 arcmin fields centered on each candidate cluster were used to construct color-magnitude and color-color diagrams. Follow-up spectroscopy of the brightest members of several cluster candidates was obtained in order to clarify their nature. Results. We report the discovery of 58 new infrared cluster candidates. Fundamental parameters such as age, distance, and metallicity were determined for 20 of the most populous clusters.",
keywords = "Globular clusters: general, Infrared: general, Open clusters and associations: general",
author = "J. Borissova and Chen{\'e}, {A. N.} and {Ram{\'i}rez Alegr{\'i}a}, S. and S. Sharma and Clarke, {J. R.A.} and R. Kurtev and I. Negueruela and A. Marco and P. Amigo and D. Minniti and E. Bica and C. Bonatto and M. Catelan and C. Fierro and D. Geisler and M. Gromadzki and M. Hempel and Hanson, {M. M.} and Ivanov, {V. D.} and P. Lucas and D. Majaess and {Moni Bidin}, C. and B. Popescu and Saito, {R. K.}",
note = "Funding Information: The data used in this paper were obtained with VIRCAM/VISTA at the ESO Paranal Observatory. The VVV Survey is supported by BASAL Center for Astrophysics and Associated Technologies CATA PFB-06, by the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism{\textquoteright}s Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC12009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS). This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the Aladin and SIMBAD database, operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France. Support for J.B. and R.K. is provided from Fondecyt Reg. No. 1120601 and No. 1130140 and Centro de Astrof{\'i}sica de Valpara{\'i}so. D.M. is supported by FONDECYT No. 1130196. C.B. and E.B. acknowledge support from Brazil{\textquoteright}s CNPq. M.G. is financed by the GEMINI-CONICYT Fund, allocated to Project 32110014. The SOAR Telescope is a joint project of: Conselho Nacional de Pesquisas Cientificas e Tecnoligicas CNPq-Brazil, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Michigan State University, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. I.N. is partially supported by Gemini-Conycit No. 32120017. M.M.H. and B.P. acknowledge support by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1009550. I.N. and A.M. acknowledge support for this work by the Spanish Government Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci{\'o}n (MICINN) through grant AYA2012-39364-C02-02. R.K.S. acknowledges support from CNPq/Brazil through projects 310636/2013-2 and 481468/2013-7. S.R.A. was supported by the FONDECYT project No. 3140605. P. Amigo is supported by the ALMA-CONICYT project number 31110002. We thank the anonymous referee for the useful suggestions that helped to improve our paper. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2014 ESO .",
year = "2014",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1051/0004-6361/201322483",
language = "English",
volume = "569",
journal = "Astronomy and Astrophysics",
issn = "0004-6361",
publisher = "EDP Sciences",
}