Study of morphology and stellar content of the Galactic HII region IRAS
  16148-5011
  An investigation of the IRAS 16148-5011 region - a cluster at a distance of
3.6 kpc - is presented here, carried out using multiwavelength data in
near-infrared (NIR) from the 1.4m Infrared Survey Facility telescope,
mid-infrared (MIR) from the archival Spitzer GLIMPSE survey, far-infrared (FIR)
from the Herschel archive, and low-frequency radio continuum observations at
1280 and 843 MHz from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and Molonglo
Survey archive, respectively. A combination of NIR and MIR data is used to
identify 7 Class I and 133 Class II sources in the region. Spectral Energy
Distribution (SED) analysis of selected sources reveals a 9.6 Msolar, high-mass
source embedded in nebulosity. However, Lyman continuum luminosity calculation
using radio emission - which shows a compact HII, region - indicates the
spectral type of the ionizing source to be earlier than B0-O9.5. Free-free
emission SED modelling yields the electron density as 138 cm^{-3}, and thus the
mass of the ionized hydrogen as ~16.4 Msolar. Thermal dust emission modelling,
using the FIR data from Herschel and performing modified blackbody fits, helped
us construct the temperature and column density maps of the region, which show
peak values of 30 K and 3.3x10^{22} cm^{-2}, respectively. The column density
maps reveal an AV > 20 mag extinction associated with the nebular emission, and
weak filamentary structures connecting dense clumps. The clump associated with
this IRAS object is found to have dimensions of ~1.1 pc x 0.8 pc, and a mass of
1023 Msolar.
