Star Formation in the Massive Star Formation Regions W49 and W43

The process of massive star formation is not well understood yet and the vast majority of stars form in massive star forming regions with complicated star formation histories. We have undertaken a detailed study of massive and active star forming complexes of W49 and W43 to study the distributions of the Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) and the clusters of young stars. We aim to determine physical characteristics of these clusters and compare them to nearby star forming complexes. We used a combination of Spitzer/IRAC, MIPS, Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and UKIRT Deep Infrared Sky Survey (UKIDSS) data to identify and classify the Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) and generated a catalog for each field over a wavelength range from 1.2 to 24 µm. For both regions we identified thousands of YSO candidate objects using color-color and color-magnitude diagrams. In addition, to understand the evolution of star formation in these regions, we analyzed the distribution of YSOs and identified the clusters by using a minimal spanning tree method and compared the clustering properties with massive star forming region Cygnus-X.