Remote star clusters discovered on edge of Milky Way
The new stars are farthest ever found from the galaxy’s main disk
STARS WITH A VIEW Two newly discovered clusters of stars lie far from the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Planets orbiting these stars might get this view of the galaxy in all its spiraling glory.
R. Hurt/ESO/JPL-Caltech/NASA
Two clusters of stars have been found in a cloud hovering on the outskirts of the galaxy. Thousands of light-years from the spiral arms of the Milky Way, the clusters are the most distant ever observed in the galaxy, scientists report online February 26 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“Now we know that star formation may occur in remote regions of the Milky Way and not only in the galactic disk,” says Denilso Camargo, a coauthor of the new paper and astronomer at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Stars form inside masses of gas called molecular clouds. Most stars in the Milky Way take shape within the spiral arms that make up the galaxy’s main disk. But the new star clusters lie about 16,000 light-years from the disk.
The team is still investigating how the star-forming cloud housing Camargo 438 and 439 strayed so far. Supernovas could have hurled the gas and dust that formed the cloud out of the Milky Way, or the material could have drifted in from outside the galaxy, says Camargo.
