We report on the discovery of several compact regions of mid-infrared emission in the starforming circum nuclear disk of the starburst/Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7582 .
The compact sources do not have counterparts in the optical and near-infrared , suggesting that they are deeply embedded in dust .
We use the [ Ne ii ] 12.8 \mu m line emission to estimate the emission measure of the ionized gas , which in turn is used to assess the number of ionizing photons .
Two of the brighter sources are found to have ionizing fluxes of \sim 2.5 \times 10 ^ { 52 } , whereas the fainter ones have \sim 1 \times 10 ^ { 52 } photons s ^ { -1 } .
Comparing with a one Myr old starburst , we derive stellar masses in the range 3–5 \times 10 ^ { 5 } M _ { \odot } and find that the number of O-stars in each compact source is typically 0.6–1.6 \times 10 ^ { 3 } .
We conclude that the compact mid-infrared sources are likely to be young , embedded star clusters , of which only a few are known so far .
Our observation highlights the need for high resolution mid-infrared imaging to discover and study embedded star clusters in the proximity of active galactic nuclei .