Related papers: The Arches cluster revisited: I. Data presentation…
The Arches is one of the youngest, densest and most massive clusters in the Galaxy. As such it provides a unique insight into the lifecycle of the most massive stars known and the formation and survival of such stellar aggregates in the…
Serving as the progenitors of electromagnetic and gravitational wave transients, massive stars have received renewed interest in recent years. However, many aspects of their birth and evolution remain opaque, particularly in the context of…
We present a quantitative spectral analysis of five very massive stars in the Arches cluster, located near the Galactic center, to determine stellar parameters, stellar wind properties and, most importantly, metallicity content. The…
We present preliminary results of the first near-infrared variability study of the Arches cluster, using adaptive optics data from NIRI/Gemini and NACO/VLT. The goal is to discover eclipsing binaries in this young (2.5 +- 0.5 Myr), dense,…
The Arches cluster, one of the most massive clusters in the Milky Way, is located about 30 pc in projection from the central massive black hole. With its high mass, young age, and location in the Galaxy's most extreme star forming…
The Galactic center is the most active site of star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy, where particularly high-mass stars have formed very recently and are still forming today. However, since we are looking at the Galactic center through…
We study a sample composed of 28 of the brightest stars in the Arches cluster. We analyze K-band spectra obtained with the integral field spectrograph SINFONI on the VLT. Atmosphere models computed with the code CMFGEN are used to derive…
We present preliminary results of the first near-infrared variability study of the Arches cluster, using adaptive optics data from NIRI/Gemini and NACO/VLT. The goal is to discover eclipsing binaries in this young (2.5 $\pm$ 0.5 Myr),…
We present and use new spectra and narrow-band images, along with previously published broad-band images, of stars in the Arches cluster to extract photometry, astrometry, equivalent width, and velocity information. The data are interpreted…
We present high-angular-resolution radio observations of the Arches cluster in the Galactic centre, one of the most massive young clusters in the Milky Way. The data were acquired in two epochs and at 6 and 10 GHz with the Karl G. Jansky…
The three young clusters in the Galactic Center represent the closest examples of massive starbursts and they define the upper mass limit of the Galactic cluster mass functions. In this review, I describe the characteristics and content of…
We have carried out a spectroscopic variability survey of some of the most massive stars in the Arches cluster, using K-band observations obtained with SINFONI on the VLT. One target, F2, exhibits substantial changes in radial velocity; in…
We present the first measurement of the proper motion of the young, compact Arches cluster near the Galactic center from near-infrared adaptive optics (AO) data taken with the recently commissioned laser-guide star (LGS) at the Keck 10-m…
We study the evolution and observability of young, compact star clusters near the Galactic center, such as the Arches and Quintuplet systems. The clusters are modeled by integrating the equations of motion of all stars while accounting for…
We present a near-infrared study of the candidate star cluster Mercer 81, located at the centre of the G338.4+0.1 HII region, and close to the TeV gamma-ray source HESS 1640-465. Using HST/NICMOS imaging and VLT/ISAAC spectroscopy we have…
The massive Arches cluster near the Galactic center should be an ideal laboratory for investigating massive star formation under extreme conditions. But it comes at a high price: the cluster is hidden behind several tens of magnitudes of…
The Arches cluster is an extraordinarily compact massive star cluster with a core radius of about 10$''$ ($\sim$0.4 pc) and consisting of more than 150 O star candidates with initial stellar masses greater than 20~M$_\odot$ near G0.12-0.02.…
We report Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Near-infrared Camera and Multi-object Spectrometer (NICMOS) observations of the Arches and Quintuplet clusters, two extraordinary young clusters near the Galactic Center. For the first time, we have…
Outside of the known star clusters in the Galactic Center, a large number of evolved massive stars have been detected; but their origins remain uncertain. We present a spectroscopic study of eight such stars, based on new Gemini GNIRS and…
The central region of the Milky Way provides a unique laboratory for a systematic, spatially-resolved population study of evolved massive stars of various types in a relatively high metallicity environment. We have conducted a…