P103	November 2005

¹ Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique - Université de Liège, Allée du 6 Août, Bât B5c, B-4000 Liège (Sart Tilman), Belgium

^* Research Fellow FNRS, Belgium
^** Research Associate FNRS, Belgium

⁺ Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory (La Silla, Chile) and with XMM-Newton, an ESA Science Mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member states and the USA (NASA).

Abstract

     In this contribution, we present an overview of the main results obtained by the Liège multiwavelength (in the X-ray and optical domains) campaign on the young open cluster NGC 6231. We probe the distribution of the O star properties, and especially their binary nature. In this regard, we revise the O-type binary fraction and we briefly discuss the distribution of the binary parameters. We then present the latest developments of the canonical L_X - L_bol relation. We discuss the causes of the observed deviations from this relation and of the X-ray variability among O-type stars. Probing the population of low mass pre-main sequence stars detected in the X-ray domain, we propose a scenario for the star formation history in NGC 6231.