VISTA Galactic Clusters Survey

I would be interested in a Galactic Cluster Survey in the south to complement the current UKIDSS GCS. Those interested so far are Nigel Hambly, Richard Jameson, and other people involved in the study of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. We would survey a large number of cluster down to a standard depth and over a large area to match the UKIDSS GCS.

Our plan is to write a science case for a Galactic Cluster Survey with VISTA within the framework of the hemisphere survey led by Andy Lawrence. The sensitivy limits will be comparable to the UKIDSS GCS or even better.

Scientific aims:

1. Shape of the IMF down to 20 Jupiter masses
2. Dependence of the IMF with metallicity and age
3. Distribution of low-mass and brown dwarfs in open clusters

List of clusters:

1. Wide-field imaging of young (<100 Myr) nearby (d < 500 pc) southern open clusters
   • Blanco 1
   • Collinder 140
   • NGC 2516
   • NGC 2547
   • IC 2391
   • IC 2602
   • IC 2118
2. More distant (~1kpc), young (~1-30 Myr) open clusters
   • NGC 6613
   • NGC 2362
   • and others
3. Star-forming regions
   • Serpens (might overlap with the VISTA GPS?)

Strategy:

• Observations in all five passbands but ZJKs are mandatory. Do we need Y and H?
• 2 epoch observations for open clusters with proper motions, including Blanco 1 and IC2391.

Follow-up spectroscopic studies could be carried out with the AAT/AAOmega and VLT/Flames multi-fibre spectrosgraph

If you would like to be involved, please contact me (nl41 at star.le.ac.uk).

Nicolas Lodieu, Nigel Hambly, Richard Jameson

List of people who expressed their interest in joining the VISTA GCS survey:

• David Barrado y Navascues - Madrid
• Jerome Bouvier - Grenoble
• Emmanuel Caux - Toulouse
• Niall Deacon - Edinburgh
• Paul Dobbie - Leicester
• Paulo Jorge Garcia - Porto
• Richard Jameson - Leicester
• Pavel Kroupa - Bonn
• Nanda Kumar - Porto
• Nigel Hambly - Edinburgh
• Simon Hodgkin - Cambridge
• Jean-Louis Monin - Grenoble
• Estelle Moraux - Grenoble
• Francesco Palla - Arcetri
• Sofia Randich - Arcetri
• Leonardo Testi - Arcetri
• Ralf-Dieter Scholz - Potsdam
• Hans Zinnecker - Potsdam