A cluster of young, blue stars shines hot in new Milky Way photo
A giant new photo reveals clouds of dust and gas stretching around a cluster of young blue stars about 4,600 light-years from Earth.
The cluster, known as Messier 18, is made up of stars that were all born from the same material at about the same time, around 30 million years ago, according to an image description from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Messier 18 is the bright grouping of stars in the upper left of this new photo, with clouds of gas and dust surrounding it.
You May Also Like
"Astronomers now know that most stars do form in groups, forged from the same cloud of gas that collapsed in on itself due to the attractive force of gravity," ESO added in the statement.
"The cloud of leftover gas and dust -- or molecular cloud -- that envelops the new stars is often blown away by their strong stellar winds, weakening the gravitational shackles that bind them."
Knowledge of how the clusters form can help scientists track the births and deaths of stars within these young groupings.
Plus, it helps us learn more about where our solar system came from.
Our sun actually may have started off as a member of a cluster like Messier 18 -- known as an open cluster -- before drifting off to do its own thing in a different part of the galaxy.
The dust and gas near the cluster may eventually "collapse in on itself and provide the Milky Way with yet another brood of stars," perpetually forming new stars in that bit of our galaxy, according to ESO.
In total, scientists have found about 1,000 star clusters like Messier 18 in the Milky Way.
This new image was created using an instrument on the ESO-operated VLT Survey Telescope in Chile.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
