Gaia DR2 open clusters in the Milky Way

I/345) data contained within the fields of those clusters. We obtained a list of members and cluster parameters for 1229 clusters. As expected, the youngest clusters are seen to be tightly distributed near the Galactic plane and to trace the spiral arms of the Milky Way, while older objects are more uniformly distributed, deviate further from the plane, and tend to be located at larger Galactocentric distances.

Thanks to the quality of Gaia DR2 astrometry, the fully homogeneous parameters derived in this study are the most precise to date. Furthermore, we report on the serendipitous discovery of 60 new open clusters in the fields analysed during this study.