SCYON Abstract

Received on May 23 2003

A study of the two northern open clusters NGC 1582 and NGC 1663

AuthorsGustavo Baume, Sandro Villanova, Giovanni Carraro
AffiliationDipartimento di Astronomia, Universitá di Padova
Accepted byAstronomy & Astrophysics
Contactbaume@pd.astro.it
URL
Links NGC 1582 | NGC 1663

Abstract

We present CCD UBV(I)c observations obtained in the field of the previously unstudied northern open clusters NGC 1582 and NGC 1663. For the former, we provide also high resolution spectra of the brightest stars. We complemented our data with Two-Micron All-Sky-Survey (2MASS) near-infrared photometry and with astrometric data from the Tycho-2 catalog.

From the analysis of all these data, we argue that NGC 1582 is a very poor, quite large and heavily contaminated open cluster. It turns out to have a reddening E(B-V) = 0.35 ± 0.03, to be placed 1100 ± 100 pc from the Sun and to have an age of 300 ± 100 Myr.

On the other hand, we were not able to unambiguously clarify the nature of NGC 1663. By assuming it is a real cluster and from the analysis of its photometric diagrams, we found a color excess value E(B-V) = 0.20, an intermediate age value (~2000 Myr) and a distance of about 700 pc. The distribution of the stars in the region however suggests we are probably facing an open cluster remnant. As an additional result, we obtained aperture photometry of three previously unclassified galaxies placed in the field of NGC 1663 and performed a preliminary morphological classification of them.