Stellar populations associated with the LMC Papillon Nebula ^*,**

¹ , Observatoire de Paris, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
² Observatoire de Marseille, 2 place Le Verrier, 13248 Marseille Cedex 4, France
³ Cornell University, Astronomy Department, 106 Space Sciences Bldg., Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
⁴ Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse-2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
⁵ Observatoire de Genève, 51 Ch. des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
⁶ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique, UMR 5572, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 14 avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁷ Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany

Corresponding author: F. Meynadier, Frederic.Meynadier@obspm.fr

Received: 16 December 2003
Accepted: 22 March 2004

Abstract

We study the Large Magellanic Cloud Papillon Nebula (N 159-5), a conspicuous High Excitation Blob (HEB) lying in the star forming complex N 159. Using JHK near-infrared photometry obtained at the ESO VLT with the ISAAC camera, we examine the stellar populations associated with the Papillon, tracing their history using stellar evolution models. Two populations are revealed: one composed of young, massive stars with an age ~3 Myr, and a second consisting of older lower mass stars of age spreading between 1 and 10 Gyr. We analyze the properties of those populations and discuss their significance in the context of N 159. We also estimate that if the star at the center of the Papillon is single its initial mass is ~50  and it is affected by an extinction A_V ~ 7 mag.