The Stellar Content of H72.97-69.39, a Potential Super Star Cluster in the Making
Young Massive Clusters (YMCs) and Super Star Clusters (SSCs) represent an extreme mode of star formation. Far-infrared imaging of the Magellanic Clouds has identified one potential embedded SSC, HSO BMHERICC J72.971176-69.391112 (H72.97-69.39 in short, Oschendorf et al. 2017), in the south-west outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud. We present Gemini Flamingos 2 and GSAOI near-infrared imaging of a 3′×3′ region around H72.97-69.39 in order to characterize the stellar content of the cluster. The stellar content is probed down to 1.5 Msun . We find substantial dust extinction across the cluster region, extending up to AK of 3. Deeply embedded stars are associated with ALMA-detected molecular gas (Nayak et al. 2019) suggesting that star formation is ongoing. The total stellar content in the cluster is estimated from the intermediate? and high?mass stellar content to be at least 10000 M , less than R136 with up to 100 000 Msun within 4.7 pc radius, but places it in the regime of a super star cluster. Based on the extinction determination of individual stars we estimate a molecular gas mass in the vicinity of H72.97-69.39 of 6600 Msun , suggesting more star formation can be expected.