Monica V. Cardaci and Guillermo L. Bosch
INFRARED IMAGES OF STAR FORMING REGIONS IN M101 (Poster)

INFRARED IMAGES OF STAR FORMING REGIONS IN M101

Monica V. Cardaci(1) and Guillermo L. Bosch(2)
(1) Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
(2) Conicet & Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

We have analysed near infrared narrow-band images of two giant HII regions in M101 obtained with NIRI at Gemini North Telescope. After performing astrometric and flux calibration using archive Hubble Space Telescope images as templates, we have identified several new emission-line knots, undetected in optical narrowband images from HST. These knots are associated to star forming events taking place within the molecular cloud in an area very close to the one where the strong starbursts are taking place. A total number of about 100 regions have been detected above 5$\sigma$ from background level and each of these could harbour stellar clusters formed by tens of bright O-type stars. The analysis of the HII luminosity function in the surroundings of NGC5461 already shows a continuous distribution of HII regions up to H$\alpha$ luminosities as bright as 3 $\times 10^{40}$ ergs ${\rm s}^{-1}$.