Where are the older stars located?
The Milky Way’s bulge — a bulbous, 10,000 light-year-wide region of stars and dust popping out of the galaxy’s spiral disc — is thought to contain some of the oldest stars in the galaxy.
What are the oldest star clusters called?
globular cluster
A team of astronomers using the Gemini-South telescope has discovered one of the oldest stellar clusters in the Milky Way. The team’s results date the globular cluster, named HP 1, at about 12.8 billion years, making its stars among the oldest ever found in our Galaxy.
Where are globular clusters usually found?
Globular clusters orbit in the halo of our galaxy, centered on the galaxy’s center and expanding above and below the galactic disk. Open star clusters tend to orbit within the disk. Globular star clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars, and some – like Omega Centauri, shown above – contain millions of stars.
What is a large grouping of older stars called?
globular cluster, a large group of old stars that are closely packed in a symmetrical, somewhat spherical form. Globular clusters, so called because of their roughly spherical appearance, are the largest and most massive star clusters.
What is the oldest star group?
Astronomers Have Found One of The Universe’s Oldest Star Clusters in Our Own Galaxy. After decades of research, an analysis of light has finally identified the age of an ancient star cluster in the Milky Way. It’s called HP 1, and it’s roughly 12.8 billion years old.
Where did the oldest stars in the Milky Way form?
The unevolved star, called J0815+4729, is located 7,500 light-years away in the halo of the Milky Way and likely formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang, some 13.5 billion years ago.
Where are stellar nurseries found?
New stars are being born right now in the constellation of Orion, the hunter. Stars form from gas, and so when they are young they can be found in big clouds of gas called nebulae. The Orion Nebula is one of these stellar nurseries.
Which type of cluster lasts the longest?
Open clusters generally survive for a few hundred million years, with the most massive ones surviving for a few billion years. In contrast, the more massive globular clusters of stars exert a stronger gravitational attraction on their members, and can survive for longer.
Where are open clusters found?
spiral
Open clusters have been found only in spiral and irregular galaxies, in which active star formation is occurring. Young open clusters may be contained within the molecular cloud from which they formed, illuminating it to create an H II region.
What is the cluster of stars called?
A star cluster is a group of stars that share a common origin and are gravitationally bound for some length of time. The two basic categories of stellar clusters are open clusters, also known as galactic clusters, and globular clusters.
Which is the huge group of stars?
galaxies
The biggest groups of stars are called galaxies. Galaxies can contain anywhere from a few million stars to many billions of stars. Every star you can see in the sky is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, the galaxy we live in.
How old is an old star?
According to our best available estimates, stars having about 90 percent of the sun’s mass are just now starting to die in the globulars. These stars are most probably around 15 billion years old, but they could conceivably be as young as 12 billion years or as old as 18 billion years.