Specific Star Forming Regions -- Oral Presentation
New IC 348 members in the outer part of the cluster
Laurent Cambresy, Observatoire de Strasbourg
V. Petropoulou (Observatoire de Strasbourg)
The IC 348 star cluster contains about 300 known members. It
has been observed at several wavelengths with deep optical and near-infrared
ground observations, and from space with XMM-Newton, Chandra and HST
observations. The cluster is embedded in the Perseus molecular cloud,
making any clustering analysis subject to extinction bias. We propose to
revisit IC 348 based a on statistical approach using 2MASS data. We
performed a combined analysis of the star density and color in this
region in order to establish a surface density map of the cluster. We
reach the conclusion that IC 348 is actually significantly larger than
previously thought by nearly a factor of 2 and we estimate that more
than 50 members brighter than K=14 mag are still unknown. These new
members are located in the outer regions of the cluster, where very few
dedicated observations have been realized so far, which is probably why
they escaped to previous identification. This result will give new
insights to study the star formation history and the dynamical evolution
of IC 348.