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arXiv · 1909.03804

VVV analysis of star clusters towards the W31 star-forming complex

Marina Bianchin·Eliade F. Lima·Eduardo Bica·Rogemar A. Riffel·Charles Bonatto·Roberto K. Saito
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Abstract

The giant HII region W31 hosts the populous star cluster W31-CL and others projected on or in the surroundings. The most intriguing object is the stellar cluster SGR1806-20, which appears to be related to a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) - a luminous supergiant star. We used the deep VVV J-,H-and K$_s$-bands photometry combined with 2MASS data in order to address the distance andother physical and structural properties of the clusters W31-CL, BDS 113 and SGR1806-20. Field-decontaminated photometry was used to analyse colour-magnitude diagrams and stellar radial density profiles, using procedures that our group has developed and employed in previous studies. We concludethat the clusters W31-CL and BDS113 are located at 4.5kpc and 4.8kpc and have ages of 0.5Myr and 1Myr, respectively. This result, together with the pre-main sequence (PMS) distribution in the colour-magnitude diagram, characterises them as members of the W31 complex. The present photometry detects the stellar content, addressed in previous spectroscopic classifications, in the direction of thecluster SGR1806-20, including the LBV, WRs, and foreground stars. We derive an age of 10$\pm$4Myr and a distance of d=8.0$\pm$1.95kpc. The cluster is extremely absorbed, with AV= 25mag. Thepresent results indicate that SGR1806-20 is more distant by a factor 1.8 with respect to the W31 complex, and thus not physically related to it.

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Marina Bianchin, Eliade F. Lima, Eduardo Bica, Rogemar A. Riffel, Charles Bonatto, Roberto K. Saito. 2019-09-09. VVV analysis of star clusters towards the W31 star-forming complex. https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2019.38

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