The Infrared Properties of Giant H II Regions W51A and M17

Giant H II regions are the sites of extensive, clustered, high-mass star formation, producing more than 1050 LyC photons/sec. They are so energetic that they are a dominant source of emission contributing to the bolometric luminosity that we see from galaxies. Therefore, studying the global and detailed properties of GH II regions within our own Milky Way can help us to understand star formation in such extreme galactic environments. We will present the initial results from a large-scale project with the goal of creating a 20 and 37 micron maps of all known GH II regions within the Milky Way with the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and its mid-infrared instrument FORCAST. Starting our analyses with W51A and M17, we combined the data from the mid-infrared SOFIA images with archival imaging data from the near-infrared, far-infrared, as well as radio CO maps to understand more about the physical properties of the environments within these GH II regions and the YSOs they contain.