Photometric and Kinematic Studies of Open Star Clusters I: NGC 581 (M 103)

Joerg Sanner, Michael Geffert, Jens Brunzendorf, Juergen Schmoll

Published 1999-08-06Version 1

We present CCD photometry and a proper motion study of the young open star cluster, NGC 581 (M 103). Fitting isochrones to the colour magnitude diagram, we found an age of 16 +/- 4 Myr and a distance of roughly 3 kpc for this cluster. The proper motion study identifies 77 stars of V=14.5 mag or brighter to be cluster members. We combine membership determination by proper motions and statistical field star subtraction to derive the IMF of the cluster and find a quite steep slope of Gamma=-1.80.