Milky Way starburst clusters

 

Stars tend to form in groups or clusters.  In the Milky Way, the typical group size in which stars are born is 300 members (Lada & Lada 2003). In galaxies with intense star formation activity, clusters can harbor up to several million stars. The most extreme clusters in the Milky Way today form a few 10,000 stars. These clusters allow as an unusual view into the formation and evolution of very massive stellar clusters in distant galaxies. They are close enough to resolve the individual cluster members, such that their brightness can be directly observed. The distribution of stellar masses in each cluster can be studied, from solar-type stars up to the most massive stars known in the present-day universe, with more than 100 times the mass of the Sun. These very massive stars are extremely short lived, ending their lifecycle after a few million years as supernovae. In fact, these young, rich star clusters are the only places where the most massive stars can be observed.

 

Hence, star clusters are unique laboratoties to investigate the birth of stars of all masses and the stellar and dynamical evolution of dense stellar systems.

 

The main research interests focus on understanding the dynamical evolution and the disruption of dense, massive star clusters in the Milky Way, with the goal to reconstruct the initial conditions leading to the formation of a “starburst” cluster, and the emerging stellar mass distribution.

The Arches cluster near the Galactic center observed with NAOS/CONICA at the VLT (Stolte et al. 2005).

Milky Way

Starburst Cluster Zoo

The neighbouring Quintuplet cluster with VLT-NACO  (ESO: VLT archive).

The young starburst cluster in the giant HII region NGC 3603 in the Carina spiral arm (Brandl et al. 1999, Stolte et al. 2004, 2006).

The spiral arm clusters Westerlund 1 and 2

 (Brandner et al. 2008, Ascenso et al. 2007).