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Gas Cloud 'in Our Backyard' Reveals Huge Star Cluster

Posted on: Friday, 25 March 2005, 12:00 CST

Welsh astronomers have discovered the largest known star cluster in the Milky Way, hidden behind a cloud of gas. The finding means they can gain a better understanding of how stars are formed - and ultimately try to answer one of the biggest philosophical debates - are we alone or is there life in space?

The super star cluster known as 'Westerlund One' is made up of around 200,000 stars - some up to a million times brighter than the sun - and is a thousand times closer than any other so far discovered.

Westerlund One is estimated to be very young, at a mere four to five million years old, and contains thousands of huge stars, some weighing 30 or 40 times more than the sun.

The cluster has been hidden behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust in the Milky Way, blocking most of its visible light and was discovered using telescopes at the European Southern Observatory.

The team of astronomers from Cardiff University, University College London, University of Sheffield, University of Amsterdam, the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory and Universidad de Alicante plan to probe the structure in detail to understand the finer details of star formation.

Dr Simon Goodwin from Cardiff School of Physics and Astronomy said, 'We were amazed when we discovered quite what a monster this cluster was and came across it quite by accident.

'All other super star clusters are many millions of light years away, but Westerlund One is in our backyard.'

Dr Goodwin explained that if Earth were to be within such a cluster, the sky would be so full of stars that they would be visible by day.

'It's not the sort of place you would have Earth-like planets forming. If you're particularly close to it, it would wipe out life on planets nearby.

'One of the things we are doing at Cardiff University is looking at how stars and planets are formed and how common planets are. This is a wonderful place to look at some very young stars and see what sort of conditions they are born in and how it might affect gases around planets.

'We could also find out if it's likely we will get one close by.'

Dr Goodwin added that research could then be done to find out where the sun came from and how planets formed around it.

'Is there anything special about our solar system, or are their millions or billions of solar systems out there? Are there Earth- like questions and is there life on them? All of these questions feed into the philosophical question: are we alone?': What are super star clusters?:Super star clusters are the extreme of star-forming environments. Estimated to contain hundreds, maybe even thousands of massive stars, they can be several orders of magnitudes more massive than normal open clusters. In the Milky Way massive clusters are rare. Wunderland One was named after a Swedish astronomer who discovered the cluster back in the 1960s, but it is only now that fuller explorations have been done to discover the true scale of the cluster.

Source: Western Mail

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