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Resource Record Summary

Catalog Service:
Milky Way Star Clusters Catalog

Short name: MWSC
IVOA Identifier: ivo://nasa.heasarc/mwscPublisher: NASA/GSFC HEASARCivo://nasa.heasarc/ASD[Pub. ID]
More Info: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/mwsc.html
VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Status: active
Registered: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z
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Description


Although they are the main constituents of the Galactic disk population, for half of the open clusters in the Milky Way reported in the literature nothing is known except the raw position and an approximate size. The main goal of this study is to determine a full set of uniform spatial, structural, kinematic, and astrophysical parameters for as many known open clusters as possible. On the basis of stellar data from PPMXL and 2MASS, the authors used a dedicated data-processing pipeline to determine kinematic and photometric membership probabilities for stars in a cluster region. For an input list of 3,784 targets from the literature, they confirm that 3,006 are real objects, the vast majority of them are open clusters, but associations and globular clusters are also present. For each confirmed object, the authors determined the exact position of the cluster center, the apparent size, proper motion, distance, color excess, and age. For about 1,500 clusters, these basic astrophysical parameters have been determined for the first time. For the bulk of the clusters the authors also derived the tidal radii. In addition, they estimated average radial velocities for more than 30% of the confirmed clusters. The present sample (called MWSC) reaches both the central parts of the Milky Way and its outer regions. It is almost complete up to 1.8 kpc from the Sun and also covers the neighboring spiral arms. However, for a small subset of the oldest open clusters (ages more than ~ 1 Gyr), the authors found some evidence of incompleteness within about 1 kpc from the Sun. This table contains the list of 3,006 Milky Way stellar clusters (MWSC) found in the 2MAst (2MASS with Astrometry) catalog presented in Paper II of this series (these clusters have source numbers below 4000), together with an additional 139 new open clusters (these clusters have source numbers between 5000 and 6000) found by the authors at high Galactic latitudes (|b_II_| > 18.5 degrees) which were presented in Paper III of the series, and an additional 63 new open clusters (these clusters have source numbers between 4000 and 5000) which were presented in Paper IV of the series. The target list in Paper II from which the 3,006 open clusters was contained was compiled on the basis of present-day lists of open, globular and candidate clusters. The list of new high-latitude open clusters in Paper III was obtained from a target list of 714 density enhancements found using the 2MASS Catalog. The list of new open clusters in Paper IV was obtained from an initial list of 692 compact cluster candidates which were found by the authors by conducting an almost global search of the sky (they excluded the portions of the sky with |b_II_| < 5 degrees) in the PPMXL and the UCAC4 proper-motion catalogs. For confirmed clusters, the authors determined a homogeneous set of astrophysical parameters such as membership, angular radii of the main morphological parts, mean cluster proper motions, distances, reddenings, ages, tidal parameters, and sometimes radial velocities. This table was created by the HEASARC in February 2014 based on the list of open clusters given in <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/558/A53">CDS Catalog J/A+A/558/A53</a> files catalog.dat and notes.dat. It was updated in September 2014 with 139 additional star clusters from <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/568/A51">CDS Catalog J/A+A/568/A51</a> files catalog.dat and notes.dat. It was further updated in October 2015 with 63 additional star clusters from <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/A+A/581/A39">CDS Catalog J/A+A/581/A39</a> files catalog.dat and notes.dat. Note that this table does not include the information on candidates which turned out not to be open clusters which was also contained in these catalogs. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

More About this Resource

About the Resource Providers

This section describes who is responsible for this resource

Publisher: NASA/GSFC HEASARCivo://nasa.heasarc/ASD[Pub. ID]

Creator: Kharchenko et al.; Schmeja et al.; Scholz et al. Contributor:

Contact Information:
X NASA/GSFC HEASARC help desk
Email:

Status of This Resource

This section provides some status information: the resource version, availability, and relevant dates.

Version: n/a
Availability: This is an active resource.
  • This service apparently provides only public data
Relevant dates for this Resource:
  • Representative: 2025 Mar 07

This resource was registered on: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z
This resource description was last updated on: 2025 Mar 07 00:00:00Z

What This Resource is About

This section describes what the resource is, what it contains, and how it might be relevant.

Resource Class: CatalogService
This resource is a service that provides access to catalog data. You can extract data from the catalog by issuing a query, and the matching data is returned as a table.
Resource type keywords:
  • Catalog
Subject keywords:
  • Star Cluster
This service provides data from:
  • facility: STAR CATALOG
Intended audience or use:
  • Research: This resource provides information appropriate for supporting scientific research.
More Info: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/mwsc.html Literature Reference: 2015A&A...581A..39S

Related Resources:

Services that provide access to data in this resource:
HEASARC TAP ivo://nasa.heasarc/services/xamin [Res. ID]

Data Coverage Information

This section describes the data's coverage over the sky, frequency, and time.

Reference Coordinate System: UTC-ICRS-TOPOXXivo://STClib/CoordSys#UTC-ICRS-TOPO[Res. ID]

Sky Coverage: Regions covered:

  • All-sky: The data from this resource is distributed over the entire sky.
Typical Size Scale (Region of Regard): , 0.5 deg

Wavebands covered:

  • Optical

Available Service Interfaces

Simple Cone SearchXXSearch Me

This is a standard IVOA service that takes as input a position in the sky and a radius and returns catalog records with positions within that radius.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for the standard interface:
  • https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/cone?showoffsets&table=mwsc&
Maximum search radius accepted: 180 degrees
Maximum number of matching records returned: 99999
This service supports the VERB input parameter:
Use VERB=1 to minimize the returned columns or VERB=3 to maximize.
Table Access Protocol - Auxiliary ServiceXX

This is a standard IVOA service that takes as input an ADQL or PQL query and returns tabular data.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for the standard interface:
  • https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/vo/tap
Custom Service

This is service that does not comply with any IVOA standard but instead provides access to special capabilities specific to this resource.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for this service interface:
  • URL-based interface: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/getvotable.pl?name=mwsc
Custom Service

This is service that does not comply with any IVOA standard but instead provides access to special capabilities specific to this resource.

VO Compliance: Level 2: This is a VO-compliant resource.
Available endpoints for this service interface:


Developed with the support of the National Science Foundation
under Cooperative Agreement AST0122449 with the Johns Hopkins University
The NAVO project is a member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance

This NAVO Application is hosted by the Space Telescope Science Institute

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