Abstract: | We present results of a photometric investigation of 9 poorly studied apparent open clusters. While the aim of our survey was to determine structural and astrophysical parameters for these objects, they were found not to be physical groups of stars. BV wide‐field CCD photometry combined with the near‐infrared JHKS data from the 2MASS and proper motions were used to study their nature. Detailed analysis of radial density profiles, morphology of decontaminated colourmagnitude diagrams, and proper motion distributions indicate that these stellar ensembles are projective chance alignments of physically unrelated stars. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) |