TY - JOUR
T1 - Probing young massive clusters with laser guide star adaptive optics
AU - McCrady, Nate
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my collaborators James R. Graham at UC Berkeley and William D. Vacca at SOFIA-USRA for their integral contributions to this ongoing project. The author and collaborators wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0502649. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2009/11
Y1 - 2009/11
N2 - We use laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS/AO) on the 10 m Keck II telescope to obtain high spatial resolution images of young massive clusters (YMCs) in NGC1569 and M82. These data probe YMC structure and the relation of the YMCs to the ambient field star population. The higher resolution of Keck LGS/AO relative to Hubble Space Telescope/ NICMOS in the near-infrared enables us to examine whether YMCs are monolithic or hierarchical assemblies. The new integral-field spectrometer OSIRIS operating behind LGS/AO can trace the distribution of massive evolved stars within a cluster and reveal the nature of mass segregation.
AB - We use laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS/AO) on the 10 m Keck II telescope to obtain high spatial resolution images of young massive clusters (YMCs) in NGC1569 and M82. These data probe YMC structure and the relation of the YMCs to the ambient field star population. The higher resolution of Keck LGS/AO relative to Hubble Space Telescope/ NICMOS in the near-infrared enables us to examine whether YMCs are monolithic or hierarchical assemblies. The new integral-field spectrometer OSIRIS operating behind LGS/AO can trace the distribution of massive evolved stars within a cluster and reveal the nature of mass segregation.
KW - Galaxies: star clusters
KW - Methods: observational
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78650137091&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10509-009-0097-4
DO - 10.1007/s10509-009-0097-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78650137091
SN - 0004-640X
VL - 324
SP - 109
EP - 112
JO - Astrophysics and Space Science
JF - Astrophysics and Space Science
IS - 2
ER -