New Horizons with Open Clusters: the WOCS
Imants Platais
I will briefly review the current status of our knowledge about
Galactic open clusters. Recent advances in instrumentation are driving
a renaissance in the studies of these classical objects, not to
mention the exciting prospects of finding exoplanets in metal rich
open clusters. Thus the WIYN Open Cluster Study (WOCS) brings
together broad astronomical expertise and forefront instrumentation
to establish comprehensive photometric, spectroscopic, and
astrometric databases for selected new fundamental clusters. Such
databases are key for entry into the "astrophysical laboratories"
represented by star clusters in the Milky Way and beyond. I will
discuss some astrophysical problems where open clusters are simply
indispensable to their solutions. For example, the interface
of stellar evolution and stellar dynamics appears to spawn
non-standard evolutionary paths of stars, some of them not understood
at all. These are exciting times for star clusters and I invite you
to enjoy the 45-min journey through their world.