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Astronomers have discovered 8,292 stellar fluxes in our galaxy. Rather than star clusters, currents form linear patterns.
Each stream is named Theia for the Greek titanium goddess of sight and heavenly light.
When astronomers used data collected by the European Space Agency Gaia Space Telescope to study Theia 456, they discovered that the 468 stars of this stream were born simultaneously. This elongated star stream is also moving in the same direction together. across the sky.
The discovery was presented Friday at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which is occurring virtually due to the pandemic.
“Most star clusters are formed together,” study author Jeff Andrews, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, said in a statement. “What’s exciting about Theia 456 is that it’s not a small cluster of stars together. It’s long and stretched. There are relatively few streams that are nearby, young, and so widely scattered. “
Stars are often formed in spherical groups, called clusters. More recent data, however, has revealed other patterns, such as these long currents, which astronomers say occurred when star clusters were torn or stretched.
“As we started to become more advanced in our instrumentation, our technology and our ability to extract data, we found that stars exist in more structures than blocks,” Andrews said. “They often form these currents in the sky. Although we have known about them for decades, we are starting to find some hidden ones.”
Theia 456 stretches 570 light years across the Milky Way.
This stellar flow has long been hidden from astronomers because it lives in the galactic plane, where the flow can easily be masked by the 400 billion stars of the Milky Way. The galactic plane is where most of a galaxy’s mass is located.
Typically, stellar flows have been discovered outside of our galaxy by telescopes that point far from the Milky Way.
“We tend to focus our telescopes in other directions because it’s easier to find things,” Andrews said. “Now we’re starting to find these currents in the galaxy itself. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. Or, in this case, finding a ripple in an ocean.”
The stars of Theia 456 are similar in composition in that they all contain roughly the same amount of iron. This suggests that the stars probably all formed together around 100 million years ago.
Astronomers have also examined how the brightness of these stars has changed over time and determined that the stars rotate at similar speeds. This is further proof that they are the same age.
“If you know how the stars move, you can go back and find where the stars are coming from,” Andrews said. “As we rolled back the clock, the stars got closer and closer. So we think all of these stars were born together and have a common origin.”
Learning more about how stars form in galaxies could lead to a better understanding of the universe and how it was filled with galaxies and stars.
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