To investigate the interaction of the massive stars with the gas and dust in the active star forming region NGC 6357, located in the Sagittarius spiral arm at a distance of 1.7-2.6 kpc (Massey et al. 2001), we analyzed the distribution of the neutral and ionized gas, and that of the dust, based on Hα, [OIII] and [SII] images obtained with the Curtis-Schmidt telescope at CTIO, radio continuum observations at 1.465 MHz obtained with the Very Large Array (NRAO) in the DnC configuration (synthesized beam = 38″), Hi data from the Parkes survey (angular resolution = 15′), CO(1-0) observations obtained with the Nanten radiotelescope at Las Campanas Observatory (angular resolution = 2.7′), and IR images in the four MSX bands (angular resolution = 18.3″).
