The Dynamics of Open Clusters

Extract

Many of the “observations” of dark matter involve the application of the virial theorem or more sophisticated dynamical models to bound gravitational systems. Such studies often adopt a certain mass function and assume that the system is in a state near equipartition. In many cases though the data are not sufficient to determine the mass function or justify the equipartition assumption. Open clusters provide excellent case studies of systems which are relaxed and which have a large observable stellar-mass range, approaching an order of magnitude in the nearest young clusters. As a result open clusters have recently been the subject of extensive dynamical study.