The NGC3603 young cluster (YC) lies in the Carina arm (~7 Kpc) and shows one of the
higher densities (6 10^4 Mo/pc3) of massive stars (O3, OB, WNL) in the Milky Way.
The ionizing photons and the fast stellar winds of these hot stars likely affect the
giant (dust and gas) HII region surrounding the cluster, forming one of the most bright
HII Galactic regions.
Several studies and, in particular, the detection of masers around NGC3603 YC suggest
that the cluster stars are triggering an on-going star formation in the surrounding
HII region. However, a clear detection of new born stars were never been provided.
We present the recent results based on the ESA Herschel space telescope observations
(70-500 micron) of the intriguing giant NGC3603 HII region.
In detail, we analysed the diffuse emission by reconstructing the temperature and the
hydrogen column density maps, obtaining a good agreement with the theoretical scenario
of a star forming region. We also detected more than 100 point-like sources. Among them
we characterized 36 young stellar objects (~3,000 yr) by using the comparison between
observed and predicted spectral energy distributions.
Our results confirm, for the first time, the occurrence of an on-going star formation
likely triggered by the NGC3603 YC.
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