Structural analysis of open cluster Bochum 2

Abstract

We present the results from our deep optical photometric observations of Bochum 2 (Boc2) star cluster obtained using the 1.3-m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescope along with archival photometric data from Pan-STARRS2/2MASS/UKIDSS surveys. We also used high-quality parallax and proper motion data from the Gaia Data Release 3. We found that the Boc2 cluster has a small size (\(\sim \)1.1 pc) and circular morphology. Using Gaia parallax of member stars and isochrone fitting method, the distance of this cluster is estimated as \(3.8\pm 0.4\) kpc. We have found that this cluster holds young (\({\sim }5\) Myr) and massive (O7–O9) stars as well as an older population of low mass stars. We found that the massive stars were formed in the inner region of the Boc2 cluster in a recent epoch of star formation. We have derived mass function slope (\(\Gamma \)) in the cluster region as \(-2.42\pm 0.13\) in the mass range of \({\sim }0.72<M/M_{\odot }<2.8\). The tidal radius of the Boc2 cluster (\(\sim \)7–9) is much more than its observed radius (\({\sim }1.1\) pc). This suggests that most of the low-mass stars in this cluster are the remains of an older population of stars formed via an earlier epoch of star formation.