  Observations at near and mid-infrared wavelengths (1-18 micron) of SGR
1806-20 suggest that it is associated with a cluster of giant massive stars
which are enshrouded in a dense cloud of dust. The centre of the best sky
position of the gamma-ray source (Hurley et al. 1999) lies on top of the dust
cloud at only 7 arcsec (~0.5 pc at a distance of 14.5 kpc) from the star
cluster, and 12 arcsec (~0.85 pc) from a Luminous Blue Variable Star (LBV)
which had been proposed to be associated with the SGR (Kulkarni et al. 1995).
The bright cloud of interstellar gas and dust observed with ISO (Infrared Space
Observatory) is probably the birth site of the cluster of massive stars, the
LBV star, and the progenitor of the soft gamma-ray repeater pulsar. The
presence of such a young star formation region is compatible with the current
interpretation of soft gamma-ray repeaters as young neutron stars. The SGR
1806-20 compact source is unlikely to form a bound binary system with any of
the infrared luminous massive stars, since no flux variations in the
near-infrared were detected from the latter in an interval of 4 years.The ISO
observations were made over two epochs, 11 days before and 2 hours after a soft
gamma-ray burst detected with the Interplanetary Network, and they show no
enhanced mid-infrared emission associated to the high energy activity of the
SGR.
