On the Nature of R 136, the Central Object of 30 Dor. A Comparison by the Galactic Cluster NGC 3603

The massive H II region NGC 3603 is the closest galactic counterpart to the giant LMC nebula 30 Dor. Walborn (1973) first compared the ionizing OB/WR clusters of the two H II regions and suggested that R 136, the unresolved luminous WR + 0 type central object of 30 Dor, might be a multiple system like the core region of NGC 3603. Suggestions that the dominant component of R 136, i.e. R 136A, might be either a single or a very few supermassive and superluminous stars (Schmidt-Kaler and Feitzinger 1982, Savage et al. 1983) have recently been disputed by Moffat and Seggewiss (1983) and Melnick (1983), who have presented spectroscopic and photometric evidence to support the hypothesis of an unresolved cluster of stars. We have extended Walborn's original comparison of the apparent morphology of the two clusters by digital treatment of the images to simulate how the galactic cluster would look like if it were located in the LMC