Sejong Open Cluster Survey (SOS). II. IC 1848 Cluster in the H II Region W5 West

IC 1848 is one of the young open clusters in the giant star forming Cas OB6 asso-ciation. Several interesting aspects relating to star formation processes in giant star forming regions attracted us to study the initial mass function (IMF), star formation mode, and properties of pre-main sequence stars (PMS). A UBV I and Hα photomet-ric study of the young open cluster IC 1848 was conducted as part of the “Sejong Open cluster Survey ” (SOS). We have selected 105 early-type members from photo-metric diagrams. Their mean reddening is 〈E(B−V) 〉 = 0.660±0.054 mag. Using the published photometric data with near- and mid-infrared archival data we confirmed the normal reddening law (RV = 3.1) toward the cluster (IC 1848). A careful zero-age main sequence fitting gives a distance modulus of V0 −MV = 11.7 ± 0.2 mag, equiv-alent to 2.2 ± 0.2 kpc. Hα photometry and the list of young stellar objects identified by Koenig et al. permitted us to select a large number of PMS stars comprising 196 Hα emission stars, 35 Hα emission candidates, 5 Class I, 368 Class II, and 24 tran-sition disk candidates. From the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram using stellar evolutio