Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21742704r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #427.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Massive Star Clusters (M > 104 M&sun;) have been known to exist throughout the local Universe, but few such objects have been found within our own Galaxy. These clusters the majority of the galactic OB star formation, and thus dramatically alter their surroundings through winds, ionizing flux and radiation pressure, and supernovae, eventually destroying their natal clouds and inflating superbubbles which will erupt from the Galactic plane. We search for the young stellar clusters within the star forming complexes identified by Rahman & Murray (2010) using the WMAP free-free and Spitzer GLIMPSE 8 micron observations. Located far across the Galactic plane, these clusters are highly extinguished and crowded by field stars. Using the 2MASS catalogue, we have developed a method of identifying overdensities of sources with colours consistent with the extinguished upper main sequence coincident with the star forming complexes. The difficulty in this method comes from the large number of overlapping foreground sources in comparison to the expected number of cluster sources in any given candidate cluster. We identify a candidate for the most massive young cluster in the Galaxy (M 105 M&sun;), which we have dubbed the Dragonfish Cluster. The candidate cluster is at a distance of 9.7 kpc and has a total ionizing luminosity of 7×1051 photons s-1. We identify nearly 400 OB star candidates associated with the cluster, to be confirmed with near-infrared spectroscopy.
Matzner Christopher D.
Moon Dave
Rahman Mubdi
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