UBVRI photometry in Pismis 11 and Alicante 5

Membership of the cluster would mean that it is one of the brightest stars in the Galaxy, and one of the few evolved very massive stars whose distance can be accurately determined. We carry out a comprehensive study of the open cluster Pismis 11, which allows us to derive with accuracy its distance and reddening.

We obtained UBVRI photometry of the cluster field and low-resolution spectroscopy of a number of putative members. We derive spectral types from the spectra and determine that the reddening in this direction is standard. We then carry out a careful photometric analysis that allows us to determine individual reddening values, deriving unreddened parameters that are used for the main sequence fit.