A multi-band catalog of 10978 star clusters, associations, and candidates in the Milky Way

Abstract

We present a catalog of Galactic star clusters, associations and candidates with 10978 entries. This multi-band catalog was constructed over 20 years, starting with visual inspections on the Digital Sky Survey and incremented with the 2MASS, WISE, VVV, Spitzer, and Herschel surveys. Large and small catalogs, as well as papers on individual objects have been systematically cross-identified. The catalog provides Galactic and equatorial coordinates, angular diameters, and chronologically ordered designations, making it simple to assign discoveries and verify how often the objects were cataloged by different authors, search methods, and/or surveys. Detection in a single band is the minimum constraint to validate an entry. About 3200 objects have measured parameters in the literature. A fundamental contribution of the present study is to present an additional ≈7700 objects for the first analyses of nature, photometry, spectroscopy and structure. The present focus is not to compile or determine fundamental parameters, but to provide a catalog uniformly characterizing the entries. A major result is that now 4234 embedded clusters are cataloged, a factor of ≈1.5 larger than open clusters. In addition to crossidentifications in different references and wavelength domains, we also communicate the discovery of 638 star clusters and similar objects. The present general catalog provides previously studied objects and thousands of additional entries in a homogeneous way, a timely contribution to Gaia-related works.