More Than a Million Hot, Young Stars are Forming in a Mysterious Dusty Gas Cloud

Astronomers have discovered that more than a million hot, young stars are forming in a dusty cloud of molecular gases in a tiny galaxy near our own. The findings reveal a bit more about the star cluster and how galaxies form.

The star cluster itself is buried within a supernebula in a dwarf galaxy known as NGC 5253, which is located in the constellation Centaurus. The cluster has one billion times the luminosity of our sun, but is invisible in ordinary light since it's hidden by its own gases.

"We are stardust, and this cluster is a factory of stars and soot," said Jean Turner, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We are seeing the dust that the stars have created. Normally when we look at a star cluster, the stars long ago dispersed all their gas and dust, but in this cluster, we see the dust."

The cluster is about three million years old, which is remarkably young in astronomical terms. The amount of dust surrounding the stars is about 15,000 times the mass of the sun in elements such as carbon and oxygen. It's likely to live for more than a billion years.

The Milky Way itself has not formed gigantic star clusters for billions of years. While it's still forming new stars, it's not forming them in nearly such large numbers.

"We're catching this cluster at a special time," said Turner. "With a cluster this large, we would expect several thousand stars that would have become supernovae and exploded by now. We found no evidence of a supernova yet."

The findings reveal a bit more about star clusters and star formation. By studying this cluster, astronomers have a real-life laboratory.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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