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.
Which cluster is the youngest and which is the oldest?
From the location of the Main Sequence Turn-Off, you can see that NGC 2362 is the youngest, then h & χ Persei, and M67 is the oldest of the clusters. This realization explains several of the other observations that we made of the differences between these two types of clusters.
Which star cluster is younger?
When a cluster is young, the brightest members are O, B and A stars. Young clusters in our Galaxy are called open clusters due to their loose appearance. They usually contain between 100 and 1,000 members.
Which star is the oldest?
List of oldest stars
| Name | Age | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| 2MASS J18082002-5104378 B | 13.53 billion years | 1950 ly |
| SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 | 13.6 billion years | 6000 ly |
| BD +17° 3248 | 13.8 ± 4 billion years | 968 ly |
| HD 140283 or the Methuselah Star | 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years | 190 ly |
What is the oldest globular cluster?
Globular clusters are big balls of old stars that orbit the centers of their galaxies like satellites — the Milky Way, for example, has around 150. … NGC 121 is around 10 billion years old, making it the oldest cluster in its galaxy; all of the SMC’s other globular clusters are 8 billion years old or younger.
How can you tell how old a star cluster is?
By determining the mass of the main-sequence turnoff stars, we get the age of the cluster. The cluster age equals the main-sequence lifetime of the turnoff stars. This is one of the ways we have studied the age of the Universe and the formation history of the Galaxy.
Which stars are the youngest?
Age and distance
| Title | Object | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Oldest star | HD 140283 | 14.5±0.8 billion years |
| Youngest | Stars are being formed constantly in the universe so it is impossible to tell which star is the youngest. For information on the properties of newly formed stars, See Protostar, Young Stellar Object and Star Formation. | |
Is the Milky Way a star cluster?
The Milky Way’s core harbors two giants: the galaxy’s largest black hole and a cluster of tens of millions of stars around the black hole that is denser and more massive than any other star cluster in the galaxy. … Nuclear star clusters exist in many galaxies and are the densest star clusters in the universe.
What is the difference between a galaxy and a star cluster?
Star clusters: Star clusters are groups of stars, from a few dozen to a few million, that are loosely held together by gravity. … Galaxies: Galaxies are huge collections of solar systems and star clusters, often containing billions of stars. Galaxies are held together by gravity.
Is a star cluster bigger than a galaxy?
When comparing the two, a typical globular cluster might contain a mass of 100,000 Suns, whereas the Milky Way has nearly 1 trillion solar masses. In other words, the Milky Way Galaxy contains 10 million times more mass than a typical globular cluster.
How old is the youngest star?
It’s the youngest neutron star ever discovered: 33 years old.
What is the color of the youngest star?
Young stars (of blue colour) emit more light than older (redder) stars. However, since there was just about as much light in the young Universe as there is today – although the galaxies are now much redder – this implies that there were fewer stars in the early Universe than today.
What type of galaxy has the youngest stars?
Cards
| Term What is the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy? | Definition A huge, slowly revolving disk. |
|---|---|
| Term Which galaxy type has the oldest stars? | Definition Elliptical |
| Term Which galaxy types has the youngest stars? | Definition Irregular |
| Term Which galaxy type are typically the largest galaxies in the universe? | Definition Spiral |
Why do stars almost never collide?
Why do galaxies collide, while stars almost never do? The reason is that the space between stars in galaxies is not empty: it is full of gas and dust. This material will interact when the galaxies collide. … Giant elliptical galaxies are generally thought to be the result of galaxy mergers.
What would the sky look like inside a globular cluster?
In a typical position in a globular cluster (maybe halfway between center and edge), there’d be many more bright stars in the sky due to the star density. These would be distributed unevenly in the sky, with more light coming from the center of the globular cluster.
How many stars are in a globular cluster?
Globular clusters (GCs) are spheroidal collections of 100,000 to a million stars found orbiting in the halos of all large galaxies. Some GCs have been shown to be almost as old as the age of the Universe, making them among the oldest stellar populations known.