Also, there was a lack of older stars in the systems, which was unexpected, because most galaxies have older stars. The researchers had not expected the combination of blue stars and lack of gas. He added that there must be some molecular gas because they are still forming stars, and the existence of mostly young stars and little gas signals that these systems must have lost their gas recently. Jones said the researchers observed that most of the systems lack atomic gas, but that does not mean there is no molecular gas. This eventually evolves into dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas before forming into stars. The scientists learned that most of the stars in each system are very blue and very young and that they contain very little atomic hydrogen gas, which is significant because star formation begins with atomic hydrogen gas. Most Of The Stars In Each System Are Blue How Were The Observations Made?Īccording to the University of Arizona, the researchers obtained their observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Jones said it is a lesson in the unexpected, and that when one is looking for things, they are not necessarily going to find the thing they are looking for, but they might find something else very interesting. The findings of the study, which describes the new stellar systems, were presented during the 240th American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, last week.
This is much farther away, but still very nearby in the scale of the universe.Īccording to the statement, Michael Jones, the lead author of a study published in arXiv, an open-access repository of electronic preprints, said SECCO1 was one of the very unusual "blue blobs". However, when the first collection of stars, called SECCO1, was discovered, astronomers realised that it was not near the Milky Way, but rather in the Virgo cluster. What Is The First Collection Of Stars Called?Īccording to a statement released by University of Arizona, the gas clouds were thought to be associated with the Milky Way galaxy, and most of them probably. After this, several research groups, including one led by University of Arizona associate astronomy professor David Sand, started looking for stars that could be associated with those gas clouds. This provides a list of potential sites of new galaxies. It is challenging to identify the origins of the five systems because they are separated from any potential parent galaxies by over 300,000 light years in some cases.Īnother research team, led by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy's Elizabeth Adams, compiled a catalogue of nearby gas clouds. The stellar systems are located within the relatively nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. The blue stars are distributed in an irregular pattern and seem to exist in surprising isolation from any potential parent galaxy. The new stellar systems contain only young, blue stars, and are about the size of tiny dwarf galaxies. The scientists described their findings at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The new stellar systems appear as "blue blobs" through a telescope, according to the researchers.
Astronomers at University of Arizona have identified five examples of a new class of stellar system that are not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation.
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