The observation of young stars with circumstellar disks suggests that the disks are dissipated, starting from the inner region, by the radiation of the central star and eventually by the formation of rocky planetesimals, over a time scale of several million years. It was also shown that strong UV radiation emitted by nearby massive stars can heat a circumstellar disk up to some thousand degrees, inducing the photoevaporation of the gas. This process strongly reduces the dissipation time scale. We study whether there exists a correlation between the spatial distribution of stars with circumstellar disks and the position of massive stars with spectral class earlier than B5, in the open cluster NGC 6611. We created a multiband catalog of the cluster, down to V~23mag, using optical data from a WFI observation at 2.2m of ESO in the BVI bands, the 2MASS public point source catalog and an archival X-ray observation made with CHANDRA/ACIS. We selected the stars with infrared excess (due to the emission of a circumstellar disk) using suitable color indices independent of extinction, and studied their spatial distribution.
We used HST-WFPC2 and the 1.54 Danish ESO-telescope at La Silla (Chile) to obtain photometry for stars located within 200 arcsec from the center of the cluster NGC 6101. HST-WFPC2 data for 1 field centered on the cluster, have been collected during HST-cycle 6. The resulting V, V-I photometry reach a limiting magnitude of V~25.5. Ground observations have been collected on July 1995. The resulting photometry containing the stars simultaneously detected in the V, B and I filters, is characterized by a limiting magnitude of V~22.5.
Based on 13 nights of observations of four fields in NGC 300, we have set up an extensive sequence of stars with accurate BVI photometry covering a relatively large (25'x25') region centered on this galaxy. This sequence of standard stars is very useful for calibrating the photometry of variable stars and other objects in NGC 300 and other galaxies obtained from wide-field mosaic images. Our standard-star list contains B, V, and I measurements for 390 stars. The accuracy of the zero points in the V filter and B-V color is better than 0.02mag, and about 0.03mag for the V-I color. We found very good agreement between our measurements and those previously obtained by Walker for 26 stars near NGC 300.
A photometric sequence consisting of 53 stars measured in the V, B, and I bands has been set up in the vicinity of the rich, young Large Magellanic Cloud cluster, NGC 1866. Many of these stars are relatively isolated and are thus suitable for use as local standard stars for photometric studies of the cluster. Color magnitude diagrams to a limit of V=20.5 for various parts of the 13x13arcmin field, centered on the cluster, show that NGC 1866 is embedded in a mix of populations which includes stars younger than the cluster itself, the dominant 0.5-3Gyr population, plus some very old stars represented by four RR Lyrae variables.
We report on a multiwavelength study of the relationship between young star clusters in the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/9) and their interstellar environment, with the goal of understanding the formation and feedback effects of star clusters in merging galaxies.
We present broadband BVI photometry for the open cluster NGC 6791, based upon analysis of 1764 individual CCD images. Data tables listing measured magnitudes and standard errors, image-quality indices, a variability index, and equinox J2000.0 equatorial coordinates for 14,342 stars to V~24 have been made available to the public through the services of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. Equatorial coordinates only have been provided for a further 1916 stars, the photometry for which we were unable to calibrate because of lack of color information.
The aim of this paper is to present the results of photometric investigations of the central cluster of the W5 E HII region as well as a follow-up study of the triggered star formation in and around bright-rimmed clouds (BRCs). We have carried out wide-field UBVIc and deep VIc photometry of the W5 E HII region. A distance of ~2.1kpc and a mean age of ~1.3Myr have been obtained for the central cluster. The young stellar objects (YSOs) associated with the region are identified on the basis of near-infrared and mid-infrared observations.
In this paper, we present the investigation of the evolutionary status of three open clusters: Berkeley 27, Berkeley 34 and Berkeley 36, all located in the Galactic anticentre direction. All of them were observed with SUperb Seeing Imager 2 at the New Technology Telescope using the Bessel B, V and I filters.
The DIRECT project aims to determine direct distances to two important galaxies in the cosmological distance ladder - M31 and M33 - using detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) and Cepheids. The search for these variables requires time-series photometry of large areas of the target galaxies and yields magnitudes and positions for tens of thousands of stellar objects, which may be of use to the astronomical community at large. During the first phase of the project, between 1996 September and 1997 October, we were awarded 95 nights on the F. L. Whipple Observatory 1.2 m telescope and 36 nights on the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT 1.3 m telescope to search for DEBs and Cepheids in the M31 and M33 galaxies. This paper, the first in our series of stellar catalogs, lists the positions, three-color photometry, and variability indices of 57,581 stars with 14.4<V<23.6 in the central part of M33. The catalog is available from our FTP site.
We identify and phase a sample of 107 Cepheids with 10days<P<100days in M81 (NGC 3031) using the Large Binocular Telescope and calibrate their B, V, and I mean magnitudes with archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data. The use of a ground-based telescope to identify and phase the Cepheids and HST only for the final calibration reduces the demand on this highly oversubscribed spacecraft by nearly an order of magnitude and yields period-luminosity (PL) relations with dispersions comparable to the best LMC samples. We fit the sample using the OGLE-II LMC PL relations and are unable to find a self-consistent distance for different band combinations or radial locations within M81. We find a distance modulus for M81, relative to the LMC, of {mu}M_81_-{mu}_LMC_=9.39+/-0.14mag, including uncertainties due to the metallicity corrections. This corresponds to a distance to M81 of 3.6+/-0.2Mpc, assuming an LMC distance modulus of 18.41mag.
