FP TrendingJanuary 19, 2021 10:09:55 IST
Scientists have discovered that there are about 500 stars belonging to a stellar stream called Theia 456 that were born at the same time and are now moving together in the same direction. Stars are usually found in collections that are round in nature, but stars are lined up in a linear fashion. This rather linear line, scientists believe, is formed when stars that were once tight clusters are torn apart and stretched by tidal forces. This new study also found that there are approximately 8,292 such streams on the Milky Way.
An artistic design of stellar generic streams in the Milky Way. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, SSC & Caltech
“We’ve found that stars are more in structures than nuggets,” said Jeff Andrews, a Northwestern University geologist and team member at recitation. “They often create these currents across the sky. While we’ve known about these for decades, we’re starting to find hidden ones. ”
This discovery was made by a team of astrophysicists from Northwestern University, Columbia University, Pontifica Universidad Catolica, University of Tampa and Western Washington University using the Gaia space telescope and NASA’s Exoplanet Transient Study Satellite and from the Zwicky Transient Facility. The results of this study entitled – “Theia 456: A New Stellar Society in the Galactic Disk” were presented at the 237th meeting of the Astronomical Society of America.
The stellar streams on the Milky Way have been aptly named Theia for the Greek goddess of vision Titan and celestial light. It’s a 500-year-old light and it’s in a hidden stream where it’s hard to see since it got lost in Milky’s 400 billion way stars. However, it is unique in that it is not a small group but in fact very long and stretched out.
The team of astronomers discovered that these stars were born at the same time by examining the abundance of iron and discovered that they were similar – 100 million years ago – which meant that the stars were similar. together. They also examined the light curve database, which captures how the brightness of stars changes over time and how fast the stars spin.
“Stars of the same age should show a specific pattern in their spinning stages,” added Marcel Agüeros, co-author of the study.
“If you know how the stars move, you can go back and find out where the stars came from,” Andrews said. “As we set the clock back, the stars came closer and closer together. Therefore, we believe that all these stars were born together and have a common origin. “