Hunting Hiddend Star Clusters in the Milky Way’s Plane

In recent years, numerous new globular cluster candidates have been identified along the Galactic plane, highlighting that the census of Milky Way globular clusters is still far from complete. In this work, I present the first systematic analysis of ~40 newly discovered star cluster candidates, combining optical and near-infrared photometric datasets. For many of these candidates, spectroscopic follow-up is still lacking, and a key long-term objective of my research is to uncover their true nature and origin. This initial effort suggests that the known Galactic globular cluster population may increase by up to 20%. But what insights can we already draw from this pioneering study? And what do these new clusters reveal about the formation and evolutionary history of our Galaxy?