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Recent ground based near-IR studies of stellar clusters in nearby galaxieshave suggested that young clusters remain embedded for 7-10Myr in theirprogenitor molecular cloud, in conflict with optical based studies which findthat clusters are exposed after 1-3Myr. Here, we investigate the role thatspatial resolution plays in this apparent conflict. We use a recent catalogueof young ($<10$~Myr) massive ($>5000$~\msun) clusters in the nearby spiralgalaxy, M83, along with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging in the optical andnear-IR, and ground based near-IR imaging, to see how the colours (and henceestimated properties such as age and extinction) are affected by the aperturesize employed, in order to simulate studies of differing resolution. We findthat the near-IR is heavily affected by the resolution, and when aperture sizes$>40$~pc are used, all young/blue clusters move red-ward in colour space, whichresults in their appearance as heavily extincted clusters. However, this is dueto contamination from nearby sources and nebular emission, and is not anextinction effect. Optical colours are much less affected by resolution. Due tothe larger affect of contamination in the near-IR, we find that, in some cases,clusters will appear to show near-IR excess when large ($>20$~pc) apertures areused. Our results explain why few young ($<6$~Myr), low extinction ($\av <1$~mag) clusters have been found in recent ground based near-IR studies ofcluster populations, while many such clusters have been found in higherresolution HST based studies. Additionally, resolution effects appear to (atleast partially) explain the origin of the near-IR excess that has been foundin a number of extragalactic YMCs.

The effect of spatial resolution on optical and near-IR studies of stellar clusters: Implications for the origin of the red excess