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| EPoS Contribution |
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NGC 3603 Young Cluster: A Galactic Starburst and its internal dynamics
Boyke Rochau Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Starburst clusters are spectacular young and dense stellar systems containing copious numbers of massive O-type and Wolf-Rayet stars and stars over the entire mass range. Hence, they are ideal objects to study cluster formation and evolution as well as to test and calibrate stellar evolutionary models. Among the Galactic spiral arm starburst clusters, NGC 3603 Young Cluster (YC), which is located in the Carina spiral arm, is the youngest and most compact one. Based on two epochs of high quality astrometric HST/WFPC2 observations, we derive individual proper motions for several 100 stars which enable us to get a clean sample of cluster members, and to derive a first estimate on the internal cluster dynamics. We clearly identify a lower mass pre-main sequence and a higher mass main sequence stellar population in NGC 3603. A particular focus of our comparison with theoretical isochrones is the exact shape and extent of the pre-main sequence -- main sequence transition region in NGC 3603 YC. The proper motions also contain dynamical information. From this we derive a velocity dispersion, which leads to the first dynamical mass estimate of the NGC 3603 cluster. | |
| Collaborators: W. Brandner, MPIA, Germany A. Stolte, U zu Köln, Germany M. Gennaro, MPIA, Germany W. Clarkson, UCLA, USA D. Gouliermis, MPIA, Germany N. Da Rio, MPIA, Germany N. Dzyurkevich, MPIA, Germany Th. Henning MPIA, Germany |
Suggested Session:
Massive stars |