  The sample of known star clusters, the fundamental building blocks of
galaxies, in the Milky Way is still extremely incomplete for objects beyond a
distance of 1-2kpc. Many of the more distant and young clusters are compact and
hidden behind large amounts of extinction. We thus utilised the deep high
resolution near infrared surveys UGPS and VVV to uncover so far unknown compact
clusters and to analyse their properties.
  Images of all objects in the area covered by these two surveys, and which are
listed as Galaxy in SIMBAD have been inspected and 125 so far unknown stellar
clusters and candidate clusters have been identified. Based on the frequent
associations with star formation indicators (nebulosities, IRAS sources, Hii
regions, masers) we find that the typical cluster in our sample is young, at
distances between 1-10kpc and has a typical apparent radius of 25arcsec. We
suggest more systematic searches e.g. at all positions of 2MASS extended
sources to increase the completeness of the known cluster sample beyond
distances of 2kpc.

Astrophysics of Galaxies