On determining membership of open clusters from relative proper motion

Abstract We discuss the determination of membership of 42 open clusters. Our analysis shows that Vasilevskis' mathematical model can be reasonably applied to this case. Our improved version of Sanders' method and our definition of cluster member based on the principles of discriminatory analysis effectively exclude stars of low probabilities. It is important in the study of open cluster to use only those with high probabilities. The effectiveness of the statistical method is closely related to the velocity distributions of the member and field stars. For fields where the error rate is high, it is better to combine other data than proper motion in determining membership.