'Stellar paternity tests' match orphaned stars to their Milky Way origins
Published Date: 1/10/2024
Source: phys.org
In the chaotic environment of open star clusters, strong gravitational interactions between bodies can launch individual stars far outside the cluster, even outside our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, for the first time researchers have mapped several of those stars, which exist outside the galaxy's disk, to the clusters of their origin using new data from the European Space Agency's Gaia Mission.