A Lifetime of Influence: Abstracts, Talks, and Posters
 

The Stellar Content of Obscured Galactic Giant HII Regions

Augusto Damineli
IAGUSP-Brazil

E. Figueredo

R. Blum

Peter Conti

A. Moises

We present results on Galactic giant HII regions from our survey covering 10 objects. Based on spectrophotometric distances to naked O-type stars, adapted to the K-band, we assess the stellar contents of the clusters, such as the IMF slope, the cluster mass and the number of photons in the Lyman continuum. We have found distances systematically smaller, by a fact of two, as compared to the classical kinematic method, based on radial velocities measured from recombination lines in the radio window. We discuss the uncertainties in both methods and comment on the impact of the new results on the position of the spiral arms, on the luminosity of our Galaxy in the Lyman continuum and on its morphological type. We present a case of study designed to provide a critical test on the distance, based on different methods, including the spectrophotometric and kinematic.