The origin of the infrared luminosity in violent star formation regions

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Abstract
We present near-infrared photometry of a sample of 14 violent star-formation regions. Their colours show that most of the 2μm flux in these objects is produced by ionized gas and cool evolved stars. The detection of a deep CO index (λ=2.3 μm) in two objects reveals that the cool evolved stars detected in them are red supergiants. The distribution of the violent star formation regions in the infrared two-colour diagram is consistent with a sequence in ages ranging from about 1–7 million yr determined from optical spectrophotometry. The combination of infrared photometry and optical spectrophotometry can provide a powerful age indicator for young (<8 million yr) star-forming regions and should be a useful tool in the study of both large-scale star formation and massive star evolution. The cool stellar component which is detected in most ‘isolated extragalactic H II regions’ is often red supergiants associated with the current star-forming activity.

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