W51 OB stars NIR spectroscopy

The formation of massive stars leads to a variety of stellar clusters, ranging from low stellar density OB associations to dense, gravitationally bound starburst clusters. We aimed at identifying the massive stellar content and reconstructing the star formation history of the W51 giant molecular cloud.

We performed near-infrared imaging and K-band spectroscopy of the massive stars in W51. We analysed the stellar populations using colour-magnitude and colour-colour diagrams and compared the properties of the spectroscopically identified stars with stellar evolution models. We derive the ages of the different sub-clusters in W51 and, based on our spectroscopy derive an age for W51 of 3Myrs or less.