Adaptive Optics at MPE: Astronomical Results and Future Plans

We have used the Adaptive Optics system ADONIS at the ESO 3.6 m telescope on La Silla, Chile, to obtain high-resolution images of the R136 complex in the young massive cluster 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Within our 12.″8 × 12.″8 field-of-view, we find more than 500 stars in our H and K near-infrared images. Combining these data with Hubble Space Telescope observations in the visual wavelength range, and comparing the brightness and colors with stellar models, we can determine the mass of each individual star. We have thus been able to construct the stellar mass function in the central crowded area down to ~ 5 solar masses. The inclusion of the infrared data obtained with Adaptive Optics in this analysis reduces the uncertainty due to varying amounts of extinction towards the individual stars. In addition, we find about 60 red sources that went undetected by the Hubble observations; these are probably young low or intermediate-mass pre-main-sequence stars, which are still embedded in dense circumstellar gas. We can constrain the age of the starburst in the center of 30 Doradus to about 3 to 5 Myrs. The mass function appears to vary between the innermost 0.4 pc and the outer region, indicating mass segregation on a time scale of only 105 to 106 years.