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Context. Recently, the first installment of data from the ESA Gaia astrometric satellite mission (Gaia DR1) was released, containing positions of more than 1 billion stars with unprecedented precision. This release contains the proper motions and parallaxes, however, for only a subset of 2 million objects. The second release will include those quantities for most objects. Aims. In order to provide a dataset that bridges the time gap between the Gaia DR1 and Gaia DR2 releases and partly remedies the lack of proper motions in the former, Hot Stuff for One Year (HSOY) was created as a hybrid catalogue between Gaia and ground-based astrometry. This catalogue features proper motions (but no parallaxes) for a large percentage of the DR1 objects. While not attempting to compete with future Gaia releases in terms of data quality or number of objects, the aim of HSOY is to provide improved proper motions partly based on Gaia data and to allow studies to be carried out now or as pilot studies for later projects requiring higher precision data. Methods. The HSOY catalogue was compiled using the positions taken from Gaia DR1 combined with the input data from the PPMXL catalogue, employing the same weighted least-squares technique that was used to assemble the PPMXL catalogue itself. Results. This effort resulted in a four-parameter astrometric catalogue containing 583 million stars with Gaia DR1 quality positions and proper motions with precisions from far less than 1 mas/yr to 5 mas/yr, depending on object brightness and location on the sky. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context. The global Milky Way Star Clusters (MWSC) survey provided new cluster membership lists and mean cluster parameters for nearly 80% of all previously known Galactic clusters. The MWSC data reduction pipeline involved the catalogue of positions and proper motions (PPMXL) on the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) and near-infrared photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Aims. In the first extension to the MWSC, photometric filters were applied to the 2MASS catalogue to find new cluster candidates that were subsequently confirmed or rejected by the MWSC pipeline. To further extend the MWSC census, particularly of nearby clusters, we aimed at discovering new clusters by conducting an almost global search in proper motion catalogues as a starting point. Methods. We first selected high-quality samples from the PPMXL and the Fourth US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC4) for comparison and verification of the proper motions. For 441 circular proper motion bins (radius 15 mas/yr) within ±50 mas/yr, the sky outside a thin Galactic plane zone (b < 5°) was binned in small areas ("sky pixels") of 0.25x0.25 deg². Sky pixels with enhanced numbers of stars with a certain common proper motion in both catalogues were considered as cluster candidates. After visual inspection of the sky images, we built an automated procedure that combined these representations of the sky for neighbouring proper motion subsamples after a background correction. The 692 compact cluster candidates detected above a threshold that was equivalent to a minimum of 12 to 130 cluster stars in dependence on the Galactic latitude were then cross-checked with known star clusters and clusters of galaxies. New candidates served as input for the MWSC pipeline. Results. About half of our candidates overlapped with known clusters (46 globular and 68 open clusters in the Galaxy, about 150 known clusters of galaxies) or the Magellanic Clouds. About 10% of our candidates are 63 new open clusters confirmed by the MWSC pipeline. They predominantly occupy the two inner Galactic quadrants and have apparent sizes and numbers of highly probable members slightly larger than those of the typically small MWSC clusters, whereas their other parameters (ages, distances, tidal radii) fall in the typical ranges. As we searched for compact clusters, we did not find new very nearby (extended) clusters, and the mean total proper motion of the new 63 clusters is with 6.3 mas/yr similar to the MWSC average (5.5 mas/yr). Only four new clusters have mean proper motions between 10 mas/yr and our observed maximum of about 13 mas/yr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims. On the basis of the PPMXL star catalogue we performed a survey of star clusters in the second quadrant of the Milky Way. Methods. From the PPMXL catalogue of positions and proper motions we took the subset of stars with near-infrared photometry from 2MASS and added the remaining 2MASS stars without proper motions (called 2MAst, i.e. 2MASS with astrometry). We developed a data-processing pipeline including interactive human control of a standardised set of multi-dimensional diagrams to determine kinematic and photometric membership probabilities for stars in a cluster region. The pipeline simultaneously produced the astrophysical parameters of a cluster. From literature we compiled a target list of presently known open and globular clusters, cluster candidates, associations, and moving groups. From established member stars we derived spatial parameters (coordinates of centres and radii of the main morphological parts of clusters) and cluster kinematics (average proper motions and sometimes radial velocities). For distance, reddening, and age determination we used specific sets of theoretical isochrones. Tidal parameters were obtained by a fit of three-parameter King profiles to the observed density distributions of members. Results. We investigated all 871 objects in the 2nd Galactic quadrant, of which we successfully treated 642 open clusters, 2 globular clusters, and 8 stellar associations. The remaining 219 objects (24%) were recognised by us to be nonexistent clusters, duplicate entries, or clusters too faint for 2MAst. We found that our sample is complete in the 2nd quadrant up to a distance of 2 kpc, where the average surface density is 94 clusters per kpc². Compared with literature values we found good agreement in spatial and kinematic data, as well as for optical distances and reddening. Small, but systematic offsets were detected in the age determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]