Turkish astronomers investigate open cluster NGC 2509

Utilizing knowledge from ESA’s Gaia satellite, astronomers from the Istanbul College have inspected a Galactic open cluster referred to as NGC 2509. Outcomes of the examine, revealed September 10 on the pre-print server arXiv, ship necessary insights into the structural and astrophysical parameters of this cluster.

Open clusters (OCs), fashioned from the identical big molecular cloud, are teams of stars loosely gravitationally sure to one another. Thus far, greater than 1,000 of them have been found within the Milky Way, and scientists are nonetheless searching for extra, hoping to search out a wide range of these stellar groupings. Increasing the record of recognized galactic open clusters and learning them intimately may very well be essential for bettering our understanding of the formation and evolution of our galaxy.

NGC 2509 is an intermediate age OC situated within the constellation of Puppis. It’s a poorly studied cluster and plenty of of its properties are nonetheless unsure or unknown. For example, some research report that NGC 2509 is situated about 3,000 light years away, whereas others level to a a lot bigger distance of no less than 8,000 mild years. The cluster’s age estimates are additionally debated because the outcomes vary from 1 to eight billion years.

That’s the reason Istanbul College’s astronomers Talar Yontan and Seliz Koç determined to analyze NGC 2509 by analyzing astrometric and photometric knowledge from the most recent Gaia Information Launch 3 (DR3).

“We carried out Gaia DR3 astrometric and photometric data-based examine of intermediate-age open cluster NGC 2509. (…) We created the catalog of NGC 2509 by contemplating a 20 arcmin radius round subject from the cluster middle,” the researchers wrote within the paper.

On condition that OCs are principally affected by foreground and background stars, the primary purpose of Yontan and Koç was to separate cluster members from subject stars to find out extra exact basic parameters of NGC 2509. Based mostly on the information from DR3, they calculated membership possibilities of stars within the area of NGC 2509. This resulted in classification of 244 stars as probably members with membership possibilities of over 50%.

By additional analyzing the 244 recognized stars, the astronomers discovered that NGC 2509 has a imply correct movement of -2.72 and 0.8 mas/yr in right ascension and declination, respectively. The cluster’s distance was estimated to be roughly 8,200 mild years, whereas its age is probably 1.5 billion years.

The examine additionally discovered that NGC 2509 has a limiting radius of about 16.7 mild years and reddening of 0.1 magazine. The metallicity of the cluster was measured to be at a stage of 0.0152 dex and its central stellar density turned out to be about 32.33 stars/arcmin².

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