LISC Catalog of Star Clusters. II. High Galactic Latitude Open Clusters in Gaia EDR3

Abstract

It is well known that there are few open clusters (OCs) in the high-latitude region of the Milky Way galaxy, because most star formation takes place in the thin disk. It is therefore crucial to look for high Galactic latitude OCs, in order to understand OCs and the Galactic parts outside the plane well. This work looks for high Galactic latitude OCs in Gaia Early Data Release 3, and determines their basic parameters from color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) if the main sequence is included in CMDs. The friend-of-friend method is applied to the determination of the membership of stars. Star groups with more than 20 bright (G < 18 mag) stars are taken as OC candidates, and these candidates are finally verified by the observed CMDs including stars fainter than 18 mag in the G band. After crossmatching with previous catalogs, 56 new OC candidates are found in the high Galactic latitude region with ∣b∣ ≥ 25°, in which 35 have somewhat clear CMDs and are suggested as newly discovered OCs. Finally, eight of the new OCs are confirmed again by the pyUPMASK technique. The new sample increases the total number of known high Galactic latitude OC candidates significantly. The distance modulus, color excess, metallicity, age, and binary fraction of 35 newly discovered OCs are determined by fitting their observed CMDs to the ASPS stellar population models. All the results are included in the new star cluster catalog, LISC, as its second part (LISC II).