2011/03/25 by M. Messineo, Maria Messineo, Ben Davies +10 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Blue straggler #Milky Way #Physics #Red supergiant #Star cluster #Stars #Stellar evolution #Stellar mass loss #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Supergiant #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/733/1/41
11 Figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2011/03/25 · openalex publication_date 2011/05/02 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Young massive ( M > 10 4 M ☉ ) stellar clusters are a good laboratory to study the evolution of massive stars. Only a dozen of such clusters are known in the Galaxy. Here, we report about a new young massive stellar cluster in the Milky Way. Near-infrared medium-resolution spectroscopy with UIST on the UKIRT telescope and NIRSPEC on the Keck telescope, and X-ray observations with the Chandra and XMM satellites, of the Cl 1813-178 cluster confirm a large number of massive stars. We detected 1 red supergiant, 2 Wolf-Rayet stars, 1 candidate luminous blue variable, 2 OIf, and 19 OB stars. Among the latter, twelve are likely supergiants, four giants, and the faintest three dwarf stars. We detected post-main-sequence stars with masses between 25 and 100 M ☉ . A population with age of 4–4.5 Myr and a mass of ∼10, 000 M ☉ can reproduce such a mixture of massive evolved stars. This massive stellar cluster is the first detection of a cluster in the W33 complex. Six supernova remnants and several other candidate clusters are found in the direction of the same complex.