  We present near infrared J, H, and K images and K-band spectroscopy in the
giant HII region W42. A massive star cluster is revealed; the color-color plot
and K-band spectroscopic morphology of two of the brighter objects suggest the
presence of young stellar objects. The spectrum of the bright central star is
similar to unobscured stars with MK spectral types of O5-O6.5. If this star is
on the zero age main sequence, then the derived spectrophotometric distance is
considerably smaller than previous estimates. The Lyman continuum luminosity of
the cluster is a few times that of the Trapezium. The slope of the K-band
luminosity function is similar to that for the Trapezium cluster and
significantly steeper than that for the massive star cluster in M17 or the
Arches cluster near the Galactic center.
