Chapter 1

Introduction
Open star clusters are used as excellent probes of the structure and
chemical composition of
the galactic disk. They are conclusive tools for tracing and studying the
formation and evolution of the stars as well as the evolution of galactic
disks. More than half of the currently
cataloged stars have been poorly studied or not studied at all. There is a
strong interest in
the astronomical community regarding the study of star clusters. This
interest stems out
from their unique and basic characteristics- the distance of the stars in
these stellar clusters being the same from the sun along with the same
age and chemical composition. Our
galaxy has about 2000 known open star clusters and most of these
clusters are found in the
galactic disks. An open star cluster is a group of loosely gravitationally
bound stars formed
from the same molecular cloud in contrast to globular clusters which are
very tightly bound
by gravity. The study of open star clusters is important because of two
reasons: i) They are
spread all over the disk and spend their entire lifetime there ii) Their
fundamental properties
like age, distance, metallicity, interstellar reddening can be measured in a
statistical manner. An important aspect of open clusters is that they are
found only in spiral and irregular
galaxies, where active star formation is occurring, so this might give us a
better insight into
the star formation rate in the galaxies. Star formation is a complex
process in which dense
concentrations of interstellar medium collapse and form stars. These
dense clouds are extremely cold (temperatures just of the order of 10-
20K). Star formation is facilitated by
the dense cool environment as the gases clump to high densities. The use
of Near Infrared
(NIR) Astronomy becomes significant in these dense regions, because
they are opaque to
visible light, but emit in NIR and thus optical astronomy is rendered
useless here. When
these dense parts of the clouds collapse under their own gravity. As these
cores collapse,
they undergo fragmentation, forming clumps of size around 0.1 parsecs
and masses of 10-
50M . These clumps then form protostars from where the stellar evolution
takes over.
Stellar evolution depicts the mapping of the entire lifetime of a star. In the
protostellar
stage, angular momentum turns the clump of cloud into a rotating disk
and the center of
the protostar accretes mass from a circumstellar disk of gases
surrounding it. This release
kinetic energy in the form of heat, which results in a rise of temperature
and pressure in the
protostar center. The star becomes an NIR/(Infra Red (IR)) source when
this temperature
approaches thousands of degrees. So, studies in NIR/IR can give us a
picture of the stellar
environments in the early universe. After a few million years of accretion,
thermonuclear
fusion begins in the core as a result of which the elements are
synthesized. When the inflow
of new gas stops, then the protostar becomes a young star and hydrogen
burning starts and
gases flow out of the star along the poles in what is known as a bipolar
flow. This phase
is called a T-Tauri phase and it may lose up to 50% of its mass before
entering the main
5
sequence stage. T-Tauri stars are usually surrounded by massive
circumstellar disks and has
vigorous activity on the surface. In the main sequence, stars spend most
of their lifespans.
After the hydrogen has been exhausted the star moves to the giant or
supergiant phase.
Interstellar extinction is the dimming of starlight by interstellar dust. The
usual interstellar dust particle size is of the order of the wavelength of
blue light. So blue light is
either scattered or absorbed by dust particles, making objects appear
dimmer (Extinction)
or redder (reddening) that they actually are. Interstellar dust grains block
the blue light, but
possesses no hindrance to the red light. And so interstellar clouds
containing dust tend to
make stars appear redder than they actually are. The reddening is an
important instrument
in determining the stellar evolution as less reddened stars would mean
that they have used
up the interstellar dust surrounding them and are evolved. Stars in the
pre-main sequence
are more reddened. Of recent, several photometric surveys such as the
Sloan Digital Sky
Survey(SDSS), 2MASS, GAIA etc. have increased the amount of data of
these star clusters
manifold and has unveiled seemingly endless possibilities and the scope
of the study of
these objects, hence allowing us to have a better insight on the evolution
and the process
of star formation. Even though photometry alone is not sufficient for the
detailed studies
of star concentration, it remains a necessary step towards the study of
clusters. Such cases
where photometry is effectively rendered ineffective requires proper
motion or radial velocities etc. The NGC 7036 is a high latitude open
cluster remnant with a core radius of 3-4
arc min. The NGC 7036 is a relatively less studied object located at a right
ascension(R.A.)
of21h10m00s and declination(Dec) of 15o2200000 . The galactic coordinates
of this object are
Galactic Longitude (l): 064:5456o and Galactic Latitude (b) : -21:4418o.
This report aims
at providing a near infrared study of the NGC 7036 as optical studies have
been performed
on this cluster prior to this. The values of interstellar extinction Aλ
obtained from the optical filters U(0.35mm)=0.341; B(0.43mm) =0.285;
V(0.54mm)=0.285 whereas for infrared
filters are J (1.25mm)=0.056; H (1.66mm) = 0.035; K (2.19mm)=0.0241.
These studies infer that the interstellar extinction for JHK filters is about
1/1 0 th of that
of the UBV filters (Nagata et al. 1990) which is why NIR studies are a
better way to study
the star cluster than the optical photometry. The objective of this project
is to provide a
qualitative analysis of the near infrared photometry of the star cluster
NGC 7036 within a
radius of 10 arc min. The analysis mainly focuses on the evolution of the
star cluster and
identifying the different class of objects composing it. The dust count is
very high in the
vicinity of the cluster and so it becomes difficult to some extent while
making observations.
We have also estimated the star count at various distances from the solar
system. The
report is structured as follows: Chapter 2 gives a briefing about the
Observational tools
and the Data Reduction techniques that are to be used to preprocess the
image obtained
from the telescope; in Chapter 3 we present the Data Analysis and results
obtained and we
summarize our results Chapter 4.
1NASA/IPAC Extragalatic Database
6