¹ University of Washington, Department of Astronomy, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195-1580, USA
² University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Astronomy, 1002 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

We present Hubble Space Telescope Planetary Camera UVI data for the little-studied cluster Hodge 301 3 northwest of 30 Doradus' central ionizing cluster R 136. The average reddening of Hodge 301 is found to be E_B-V = 0.28 ± 0.05 from published infrared and ultraviolet photometry. Using two different sets of evolutionary models, we derive an age of  20-25 Myr for Hodge 301, which makes it roughly 10 times as old as R 136. Hodge 301 is the most prominent representative of the oldest population in the 30 Dor starburst region: a region that has undergone multiple star formation events. This range of ages is an important consideration for the modelling of starburst regions. Hodge 301 shows a widened upper main sequence largely caused by Be stars. We present a list of Be star candidates. The slope of the initial mass function for intermediate-mass main sequence stars ranging from 10 M to 1.3 M is found to be  = -1.4 ± 0.1, in good agreement with a Salpeter law. There is no indication for a truncation or change of slope of the IMF within this mass range. In accordance with the age of Hodge 301 no obvious pre-main-sequence stars are seen down to  1 M. We estimate that up to 41±7 stars with masses > 12 M may have turned into supernovae since the formation of the cluster. Multiple supernova explosions are the most likely origin of the extremely violent gas motions and the diffuse X-ray emission observed in the cluster surroundings.

2000, AJ, 119, 787