Bibcode
Rübke, K.; Herrero, A.; Borissova, J.; Ramirez-Alegria, S.; García, M.; Marin-Franch, A.
Referencia bibliográfica
Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VIII, Proceedings of the XI Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on September 8-12, 2014, in Teruel, Spain, ISBN 978-84-606-8760-3. A. J. Cenarro, F. Figueras, C. Hernández-Monteagudo, J. Trujillo Bueno, and L. Valdivielso (eds.), p. 614-614
Fecha de publicación:
5
2015
Número de citas
1
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
The Milky Way is expected to contain a large number of young massive
(few x 1000 solar masses) stellar clusters, borne in dense cores of gas
and dust. Yet, their known number remains small. We have started a
programme to search for such clusters, MASGOMAS (MAssive Stars in
Galactic Obscured MAssive clusterS). Initially, we selected promising
candidates by means of visual inspection of infrared images. In a second
phase of the project we have presented a semi-automatic method to search
for obscured massive clusters that resulted in the identification of new
massive clusters, like MASGOMAS-1 (with more than 10,000 solar masses)
and MASGOMAS-4 (a double-cored association of about 3,000 solar masses).
We have now developped a new automatic tool for MASGOMAS that allows the
identification of a large number of massive cluster candidates from the
2MASS and VVV catalogues. Cluster candidates fulfilling criteria
appropriated for massive OB stars are thus selected in an efficient and
objective way. We present the results from this tool and the
observations of the first selected cluster, and discuss the implications
for the Milky Way structure.