Tuesday 13 April at 3:00pm

Jean-Rene Roy - Universite de Laval, Canadian Gemini Project Scientist

"Formation and Early Evolution of Super Star Clusters"

ABSTRACT: "Results of HST WFPC2 imaging and FOS + STIS spectroscopy of some nearby massive young super star clusters will be presented. It will be shown that red supergiants appear distributed over a ~100 pc size ``halo'', while the young blue stars and most Wolf-Rayet stars are in or very close to compact clusters a few parsecs in size. A scenario where red supergiants, belonging to an early phase of star formation, set the conditions for the production of parsec scale super star clusters will be proposed. The complex star formation history of a chain of super star clusters in the galaxy NGC 2366 will also be discussed. It will be shown that even at low metallicity, very young super clusters may be compeletely hidden by dust."