The Quintuplet cluster

I. A K-band spectral catalog of stellar sources

University of Potsdam, Institute for Physics and Astronomy, 14476 Potsdam, Germany e-mail: adriane@astro.physik.uni-potsdam.de

Received: 11 June 2008
Accepted: 10 September 2008

Abstract

Context. Three very massive clusters are known to reside in the Galactic center region, the Arches cluster, the Quintuplet cluster, and the central parsec cluster, each of them rich in young hot stars. With new infrared instruments, this region is no longer obscured for the observer.

Aims. For understanding these very massive clusters, it is essential to know their stellar inventory. We provide comprehensive spectroscopic data for the stellar population of the Quintuplet cluster that will form the basis of subsequent spectral analyses.

Methods. Spectroscopic observations of the Quintuplet cluster were obtained with the Integral Field Spectrograph SINFONI-SPIFFI at the ESO-VLT. The inner part of the Quintuplet cluster was covered by 22 slightly overlapping fields, each of them of in size. The spectral range comprises the near-IR K-band from 1.94 to 2.45 μm. The 3D data cubes of the individual fields were flux-calibrated and combined to one contiguous cube, from which the spectra of all detectable point sources were extracted.

Results. We present a catalog of 160 stellar sources in the inner part of the Quintuplet cluster. The flux-calibrated K-band spectra of 98 early-type stars and 62 late-type stars are provided as Online Material. Based on these spectra, we assign spectral types to all detected sources and derive synthetic -band magnitudes. Our sample is complete to about the 13th K-magnitude. We report the detection of two hitherto unknown Wolf-Rayet stars of late WC type (WC9 or later). Radial velocities are measured and employed to assess the cluster membership. The quantitative analysis of the early-type spectra will be the subject of a subsequent paper.