We report the discovery of a young massive stellar cluster embedded in an extended HII region , invisible at optical wavelengths where the extinction is A _ { V } \approx 28 magnitudes , associated with the IRAS source 16177-5018 . J,H and nb K imaging photometry combined with the K _ { S } 2MASS data show the presence of sources with infrared excess emission at 2.2 \mu m , concentrated in an area of about one square parsec around a massive young stellar object identified as the IRAS source .
This object has a near-mid infrared spectral index betweem 2.2 and 25 \mu m \alpha ( { IR } ) = d { log } ( \lambda F _ { \lambda } ) / d { log } \lambda 
=4.78 , characteristic of compact H II regions , with bolometric luminosity , inferred from the integrated near to far-infrared flux density of 2.8 \times 10 ^ { 5 } L _ { \odot } , which corresponds to a ZAMS star of about 42 M _ { \odot } .
From the color-magnitude diagram we were able to classify the majority of the cluster members as reddened massive stars earlier than spectral type B5 .