March 6, 2017 This vibrant image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Meixner (STScI) & the SAGE Legacy Team.

The discovery of young stars in old star clusters could send scientists back to the drawing board for one of the Universe's most common objects.

Dr Bi-Qing For, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, said our understanding of how stars evolve is a cornerstone of astronomical science.

"There are a billion trillion stars in the Universe and we've been observing and classifying those we can see for more than a century," she said.

"Our models of stellar evolution are based on the assumption that stars within star clusters formed from the same material at roughly the same time."

A star cluster is a group of stars that share a common origin and are held together by gravity for some length of time.

Because star clusters are assumed to contain stars of similar age and composition researchers have used them as an "astronomical laboratory" to understand how mass affects the evolution of stars.

"If this assumption turns out to be incorrect, as our findings suggest, then these important models will need to be revisited and revised," Dr For said.

The discovery, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, involves a study of star clusters located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring galaxy to the Milky Way.

By cross-matching the locations of several thousand young stars with the locations of stellar clusters, the researchers found 15 stellar candidates that were much younger than other stars within the same cluster.

"The formation of these younger stars could have been fuelled by gas entering the clusters from interstellar space," said co-author Dr Kenji Bekki, also from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.

"But we eliminated this possibility using observations made by radio telescopes to show that there was no correlation between interstellar hydrogen gas and the location of the clusters we were studying.

"We believe the younger stars have actually been created out of the matter ejected from older stars as they die, which would mean we have discovered multiple generations of stars belonging to the same cluster."

Dr Bekki said the stars were currently too faint to see using optical telescopes because of the dust that surrounds them.

"They have been observed using infrared wavelengths by orbiting space telescopes Spitzer and Herschel, operated by NASA and the European Space Agency," he said.

"An envelope of gas and dust surrounds these young stars but as they become more massive and this shroud blows away, they will become visible at optical wavelengths for powerful instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope."

"If we point Hubble at the clusters we've been studying, we should be able to see both young and old stars and confirm once and for all that star clusters can contain several generations of stars."

Explore further: Image: Hubble admires a youthful globular star cluster

More information: , OUP accepted manuscript, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slx015

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The discovery of young stars in old star clusters could send scientists back to the drawing board for one of the Universe's most common objects.

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^^^^And what has that pile of irrelevant fail got to do with anything in the article?

That the cluster stars actually form from ejections from the core star. The metallicity will vary among the individual stars, largely depending on their size and location within the cluster. That the metallicity is largely dependent on the internal growth rates of the star itself, as new matter generated both therein each star and from the core is largely non-metallic. And now intermediate core black holes found in a cluster, as I had predicted.

Gosh. Maniacs, Say it Ain't so!

https://phys.org/...ter.html

https://phys.org/...ars.html

https://phys.org/...ter.html

https://phys.org/...ter.html

So if my analysis is so lame, what does that make yours?? Lamer??

"Recent studies have shown that an extended main-sequence turn-off is a common feature among intermediate-age clusters (13 Gyr) in the Magellanic Clouds. Multiple-generation star formation and stellar rotation or interacting binaries have been proposed to explain the feature.............

The paper goes on: "These findings support for the multiple-generations scenario as a plausible explanation for the extended main-sequence turn-off."

There is therefore no upset applecart, just another revision of the list of possible explanations.

Interestingly, the same phenomenon has been observed in globular clusters in the Milky Way. ( see https://arxiv.org...6526.pdf , and references therein).

@Tuxford, Nope. Just read the paper, and it says nothing about stars being formed from material ejected from other stars in the cluster.

You call this rational?: http://etheric.com/

Lol.

Apology owed to Tuxford? 🙂

Err, no. read LaViolette's model, as outlined by Tuxford's comments in the articles he highlighted in his OP. It bears no resemblance to what is being discussed in this article. This is just regular star formation from gas clouds expelled in supernovae a long time ago.

"Our finding also suggests that the gas supply for second-generation star formation cannot originate from young massive stars but must be from old AGB stars."

Admittedly, my phraseology was a bit crap, but there is nothing in this as regards LaViolette's nonsense: http://etheric.co...onomy/2/

To paraphrase a poster elsewhere, "LaViolette started off quite promisingly, but then became insane."

I would define this as fusion. Older stars within a vast amount of material, not quite an elliptical galaxy, where there exist multiple pockets of charge and charge clusters, i.e. elements, in free frall. Thus the force causing fusion is the "gravitational" force, which can be defined from the charge distribution, an attractive force since charge will always comply, like charge more distant and unlike charges move closer together, So one can see the rotations and revolving elements that will create matter, or be consumed by a star. Not the other scenario. Ejections are varied.

Science is too limited for solving this puzzle, being locked inside a hall of intellectual mirrors, when the solution actually lies outside the hall. Dumb and dumber congratulating each other inside the hall. Lost. Not even blatant contrary observations can shake them from their mania. They must defend their world-view. Their sense of sanity is challenged. And so they lash out, like davy here.

The issue was your bald assertion to Tuxford and insulting his reading comprehension. Your assertion was demonstrated false by the facts as written in Dr For's Letter itself. Why not be a big man and just apologize for THAT alone? The rest of your disagreements are irrelevant to THAT particular issue. Yes? So go on, mate, prove you are not letting personal feuds and ill will etc get in the way of your objective regard for the facts once they are objectively presented (as in my post quoting the Letter itself). Give him that apology limited to THAT at least; it's only fair; and your credibility will only be improved if you admit your error when faced with same. Yes? And who knows, maybe the ill will and personal distractions may in future be reduced due to that honest gesture. Yes? 🙂

"The temperature of stars is directly related to the speed of its rotation. Those with slower rotation are red, while with the increase of the rotation speed, also increases the glow and the temperature of a star. As a consequence, it turns white and blue . If we consult the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, it is obvious that both very small and super giant stars can have the same glow; they can be white, red or blue. " from https://www.acade...rotation

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Star clusters discovery could upset the astronomical applecart - Phys.Org