Discovery of New Milky Way Star Clusters Candidates in the 2MASS Point Source Catalog

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Abstract
A systematic search of the 2MASS point source catalog, covering 47% of the sky, was carried out aiming to reveal any hidden globular clusters in our Galaxy. Eight new star clusters were discovered by a search algorithm based on finding peaks in the apparent stellar surface density, and a visual inspection of their vicinities yielded additional two. They all are concentrated toward the Galactic plane and are hidden behind up to Av=20 mag which accounts for their late discovery. The majority of new clusters are associated with H II regions or unidentified IRAS sources suggesting that they are young, probably similar to Arches or open clusters. Only one candidate has morphology similar to a globular cluster and the verification of its nature will require deeper observations with higher angular resolution than the 2MASS data.

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