Young Massive Clusters

Abstract

Over the past ten years, there has been a revolution in our understanding of massive young stellar clusters in the Galaxy. Initially, there were no known examples having masses $>10^4$, yet we now know that there are at least a half dozen such clusters in the Galaxy. In all but one case, the masses have been determined through infrared observations. Several had been identified as clusters long ago, but their massive natures were only recently determined. Presumably, we are just scratching the surface, and we might look forward to having statistically significant samples of coeval massive stars at all important stages of stellar evolution in the near future. I review the efforts that have led to this dramatic turn of events and the growing sample of young massive clusters in the Galaxy.

Conference proceedings, Massive Stars as Cosmic Engines, IAU Symp 250, ed. F. Bresolin, P. A. Crowther, & J. Puls (Cambridge Univ. Press) with corrected typo

References in corpus (33)

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• The Stellar Cusp Around the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• HST/NICMOS Observations of Massive Stellar Clusters Near the Galactic Center
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• An upper limit to the masses of stars
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• Statistical Confirmation of a Stellar Upper Mass Limit
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• The Arches Cluster Mass Function
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• X-ray Observations of Stellar Clusters Near the Galactic Center
• VLA Detection of the Ionized Stellar Winds Arising from Massive Stars in the Galactic Center Arches Cluster
• High Spectral Resolution Observations of the Massive Stars in the Galactic Center
• A Second Luminous Blue Variable in the Quintuplet Cluster
• A Rich Population of X-ray Emitting Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Galactic Starburst Cluster Westerlund 1
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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nonthermal particles and photons in starburst regions and superbubbles
• Isolated massive stars in the Galactic center: The dynamic contribution from the Arches and Quintuplet star clusters
• Inside the core of a young massive star cluster: 3D MHD simulations
• Light Element Nucleosynthesis in a Molecular Cloud Interacting with a Supernova Remnant and the Origin of Beryllium-10 in the Protosolar Nebula
• Massive open star clusters using the VVV survey III: A young massive cluster at the far edge of the Galactic bar
• HST-ACS photometry of the isolated dwarf galaxy VV124=UGC4879. Detection of the Blue Horizontal Branch and identification of two young star clusters
• The stellar population of the star forming region G61.48+0.09
• Properties of young star cluster systems: the age signature from near-infrared integrated colours