Catalog of super star clusters in IRAS 17138-1017

We detect with a fair degree of confidence 54 SSCs of m_Ks between 16 mag and 21 mag with a median instrumental uncertainty of 0.05 mag. When plotted on a color-color diagram and a color-magnitude diagram, it appears that most of the sources are very much extinct with respect to an intrinsic theoretical evolutionary track. Once de-reddened, the colors point unambiguously to two distinct and very recent starburst episodes at 2.8 and 4.5Myr.

While the SSCs in the 4.5Myr starburst are distributed along the spiral arms, the 2.8Myr SSCs are concentrated in the central region. The luminosity and mass functions present a classical power-law behavior, although with shallower slopes than generally observed in LIRGs. Comparison with radiative transfer simulations shows that, especially for the youngest SSCs, the thermal emission by dust is not negligible and could explain the few very red SSCs that could not be de-reddened safely.

This effect could lead to a misevaluation of the age of the starburst by at most 1 or 2Myr.