Impossible Survivors: New Star Cluster Candidates in the Galactic Bulge

Abstract

We have extended our search for globular cluster (GC) candidates into the central regions of the Milky Way (MW), using the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea survey (VVV, Minniti et al. 2010), and its extension the VVVX survey, supplemented with data from 2MASS and Gaia DR2. We report 194 new cluster candidates, including their IDs, Galactic coordinates, equatorial coordinates, and Ks-band extinctions. The extinctions in the fields of all these candidates are high as most of them are located at low Galactic latitudes. The GC candidates need to be confirmed with deeper photometric, astrometric, and spectroscopic follow-up observations.