Near-infrared photometry and radio continuum study of the massive star-forming regions IRAS 21413+5442 and IRAS 21407+5441

IRAS 21413+5442 and IRAS 21407+5441 are two massive star-forming regions of high luminosity, likely associated with each other. Near-infrared (NIR) photometry on these two IRAS sources was performed at United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) using the UFTI under excellent seeing conditions yielding an angular resolution of similar to 0.5 arcsec. Our results reveal details of stellar content to a completeness limit (90 per cent) of J = 18.5, H = 18.0 and K = 17.5 mag in the two regions. In IRAS 21413+5442, we identify a late O-type star, having large H - Kcolour, to be near the centre of the CO jets observed by earlier authors. The UKIRT images reveal in IRAS 21407+5441, a faint but clear compact H II region around a central high- and intermediate-mass star cluster. We have detected a number of sources with large H - Kcolour which are not detected in J band. We also present the GMRT radio continuum map at 1.28 GHz covering the entire region surrounding the two star-forming clouds. The radio continuum fluxes are used to estimate the properties of H II regions which seem to support our NIR photometric results. Based on our radio continuum map and the archival Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) 8.2-mu m image, we show that the two IRAS sources likely belong to the same parent molecular cloud and conjecture that a high-mass star of large IR colours, present in between the two sources, might have triggered star formation in this region. However, one cannot rule out the alternative possibility that Star A could be a nearby foreground star.