A case study of oversight and neglect in the handling of massive data

Abstract

We present and discuss data coming from the Gaia Data Release 3 mission up to $G = 21$ mag in two stellar fields covering about 5 square degrees in the area of the open cluster NGC 2659 in the region of Vela. In combination with the pyUPMASK and ASteCA analysis packages, Gaia data provide membership probabilities, structure and fundamental parameters of three open clusters, NGC 2659, UBC 482 and UBC 246 already found in this place. We found that two of them, NGC 2659 and UBC 246, are superposed along the line of sight and separated by about 100 pc. This confirms previous reports about their existence, the more evident being the young group NGC 2659 while the other, UBC 246, is a relatively faint and older object. We also investigated the true nature of the binary system composed by NGC 2659 and UBC 482.