Massive Young Clusters

Abstract

In the last decade we have come to realize that the traditional classification of stellar clusters into open and globular clusters cannot be easily extended beyond the realm of the Milky Way, and that even for our Galaxy it is not fully valid. The main failure of the traditional classification is the existence of Massive Young Clusters (MYCs), which are massive like Globular Clusters (GCs) but also young like open clusters. We describe here the mass and age distributions of clusters in general with an emphasis on MYCs. We also discuss the issue of what constitutes a cluster and try to establish a general classification scheme.