Program: GS-2013A-Q-28

Title:The low mass end of the starburst cluster Westerlund 1
PI:Augusto Damineli
Co-I(s): Robert Blum

Abstract

We plan to assess the low-end (M~0.2Msun) of the IMF in the super star cluster Westerlund 1, what was not possible until now because of severe crowding. We want to know if formation of low mass stars is supressed, like in R136 (30 Dor) and like it is supposed to occur in starburst galaxies. We want to check if accretion disks around PMS stars were photo-evaporated by the massive ionizing members of the cluster (like in R136). Previous photometry of this cluster have been limited to Ks&lt,17 (50% completness) because of severe crowding. GeMS can go much deeper (~100x less crowding) with uniform PSF along wider area than previous works.