Abstract

Three new obscured Milky Way clusters were detected as surface density peaks in the 2MASS point source catalog during our on-going search for hidden globular clusters and massive Arches-like star clusters. One more cluster was discovered serendipitously during a visual inspection of the candidates. The first deep J, H, and Ks imaging of the cluster [IBP 2002] CC 01 is presented. We estimated a cluster age of ?1-3 Myr, distance modulus of (m - M)0 = 12.56 ± 0.08 mag (D = 3.5 kpc), and extinction of A y ? 7.7 mag. We also derived the initial mass function slope for the cluster: ? = -2.23 ± 0.16 (?Salpeter = -2.35). The integration over the initial mass function yielded a total cluster mass Mtotal ? 1800 ± 200 M?. CC 01 appears to be a regular, not very massive star cluster, whose formation has probably been induced by the shock front from the nearby HII region Sh 2-228.