We present sub-arcsec ( FWHM \sim 0.5 \arcsec ) J , H , K and L ^ { \prime } images of a young stellar cluster associated with a candidate massive protostar IRAS 22134+5834 .
The observations reveal a centrally symmetric , flattened cluster enclosing a central dark region .
The central dark region is possibly a cavity within the flattened cluster .
It is surrounded by a ring composed of 5 bright stars and the candidate massive protostar IRAS 22134+5834 .
We construct JHKL ^ { \prime } color-color and HK color-magnitude diagrams to identify the young stellar objects and estimate their spectral types .
All the bright stars in the ring are found to have intrinsic infrared excess emission and are likely to be early to late B type stars .
We estimate an average foreground extinction to the cluster of A _ { v } \sim 5 mag and individual extinctions to the bright stars in the range A _ { v } \sim 20-40 mag indicating possible cocoons surrounding each massive star .
This ring of bright stars is devoid of any HII region .
It is surrounded by an embedded cluster making this an example of a ( proto ) cluster that is in one of the dynamically least relaxed states .
These observations are consistent with the recent non-axisymmetric calculations of Li & Nakamura , who present a star formation scenario in which a magnetically subcritical cloud fragments into multiple magnetically supercritical cores , leading to the formation of small stellar groups .