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WIYN Open Cluster Study. VII. NGC 2451A and the Hipparcos Distance Scale
We provide new evidence that NGC 2451A is undoubtedly a young opencluster, although sparsely populated. New cluster membership has beenderived from relative proper motions of 5868 stars. In total, 136 starsdown to V~15 have membership probability Pμ>=2%. NewCCD BV photometry indicates that about 70 stars are indeed main-sequencestars of NGC 2451A. This is also supported by our measurements of radialvelocities. A total of 34 very likely cluster members yield a meanheliocentric radial velocity for NGC 2451A equal to +22.9 kms-1. The high quality of our BV photometry, a confirmation ofcluster membership from proper motions and radial velocities, and arecently obtained metallicity estimate for several cluster stars allowus to perform a precise isochrone fit. The Yale isochrones, updated bythe latest available input physics, have been fitted to the cluster'scolor-magnitude diagram, yielding a distance modulusV0-MV in the range 6.35 to 6.38, which is inexcellent agreement with the distance modulus (m-M)0=6.38derived from the Hipparcos data recently by van Leeuwen and Robichon etal. For NGC 2451A the isochrone fit yields an age of 60+/-20 Myr; hence,the cluster appears to be somewhat younger than the Pleiades. We alsopresent alternative evidence suggesting that the cluster could beslightly older than the Pleiades. The most important result of thisstudy is an excellent match between the main-sequence fitting andHipparcos distances to NGC 2451A. If we consider noticeable similaritiesbetween NGC 2451A and Pleiades, then the Hipparcos distance anomaly forPleiades may not require an explanation of astrophysical nature.
| Open clusters with Hipparcos. I. Mean astrometric parameters
New memberships, mean parallaxes and proper motions of all 9 openclusters closer than 300 pc (except the Hyades) and 9rich clusters between 300 and 500 pc have been computed using Hipparcosdata. Precisions, ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 mas for parallaxes and 0.1 to0.5 mas/yr for proper motions, are of great interest for calibratingphotometric parallaxes as well as for kinematical studies. Carefulinvestigations of possible biases have been performed and no evidence ofsignificant systematic errors on the mean cluster parallaxes has beenfound. The distances and proper motions of 32 more distant clusters,which may be used statistically, are also indicated. Based onobservations made with the ESA Hipparcos astrometry satellite
| The nature of some doubtful open clusters as revealed by HIPPARCOS
We discuss the nature of some galactic open clusters by using propermotions and parallaxes from the Hipparcos and ACT catalogues. We showthat the clusters Collinder 399, Upgren 1, NGC 1252 and Melotte 227 donot exist. Collinder 132 is found to be mainly composed out of membersof an OB association, but there may be a star cluster present in thisarea too. Roeser & Bastian (1994) proposed that NGC 2451 consists oftwo star clusters. We show that NGC 2451 A definitively does exist, NGC2451 B may exist. A star cluster may also be present in the area ofRoslund 5. The Hipparcos data finally confirm the reality of Collinder135.
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