Discovery and spectroscopic study of the massive Galactic cluster

During the last decade, hundreds of young massive cluster candidates have been detected in the disk of the Milky Way. We investigate one of these candidates, Mercer 81, which was discovered through a systematic search for stellar overdensities, with follow-up infrared photometry in order to find emission-line stars and confirm it as a massive cluster. Surprisingly, the brightest stars turned out to be a chance alignement of foreground stars, while a real massive cluster was found among some fainter stars in the field. From a first spectroscopic study of four emission-line stars, it follows that Mercer 81 is a very massive young cluster, placed at the far end of the Galactic bar. Additionaly, in this work we present some unpublished spectra from a follow-up observation program which confirm that the cluster hosts several Nitrogen-rich Wolf-Rayet stars (WN).