Star and Cluster Formation

Star clusters are essential to understanding stellar formation and age. Our group studies the kinematics and dynamical formation of star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. We investigate the mass formation of the young, massive clusters (YMCs) in the Galactic Center as well as active star-forming clusters.

The Quintuplet Cluster is an open cluster located near the Galactic Center. It is a young (~4 Myr), massive cluster. One of the primary challenges of investigating the cluster is that it is surrounded by dust. This means that high-magnitude (faint) stars are difficult to resolve.

Stars at ~5 M_⊙ reach a completeness limit of 0.5.

Rui et al. 2019

Stellar Proper Motions in the Orion Nebula Cluster (D. Kim et al. 2019, AJ, 157, 109)

The 3D Kinematics of the Orion Nebula Cluster: NIRSPEC-AO Radial Velocities of the Core Population (Theissen et al. 2022, ApJ 926, 141)

see the Galactic Center page.

This cluster is a star-forming massive cluster in the Milky Way
Galax that is approximately 2.5 kpc away; typically associated with Eta Carina. Its young age (< 10Myr) and large mass (10^4 Solar Masses) makes it a great candidate for testing star cluster formation theories answering questions, such as, which factors decide star formation efficiency and what are typical star cluster formation time scales.