{"id":14685,"date":"2017-07-27T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=14685"},"modified":"2017-07-27T00:45:14","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T04:45:14","slug":"eso-three-broods-of-young-stars-spotted-in-the-orion-nebula-cluster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=14685","title":{"rendered":"ESO: Three broods of young stars spotted in the Orion Nebula Cluster"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest report from ESO<\/a>\u00a0 (European Southern Observatory):<\/p>\n

A Tale of Three Stellar Cities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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OmegaCAM \u2014 the wide-field optical camera on ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) \u2014 has captured the spectacular Orion Nebula and its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, \u00a0producing this beautiful new image. This famous object, the birthplace of many massive stars, is one of the closest stellar nurseries, at a distance of about 1350 light-years. [Larger image<\/a>]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>Using new observations from ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have discovered three different populations of young stars within the Orion Nebula Cluster. This unexpected discovery adds very valuable new insights for the understanding of how such clusters form. It suggests that star formation might proceed in bursts, where each burst occurs on a much faster time-scale than previously thought.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/cdn.eso.org\/videos\/medium_podcast\/eso1723a.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Surprise: astronomers have found what look like three different generations of baby stars\u200b within the Orion Nebula Cluster.
\n[Higher resolution video<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

OmegaCAM<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the wide-field optical camera on ESO\u2019s\u00a0VLT Survey Telescope<\/a>\u00a0(VST) \u2014 has captured the spectacular\u00a0Orion Nebula<\/a>\u00a0and its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, producing a beautiful new image. This object is one of the closest stellar nurseries for both low and high-mass stars, at a distance of about 1350 light-years\u00a0[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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OmegaCAM \u2014 the wide-field optical camera on ESO\u2019s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) \u2014 has captured the spectacular Orion Nebula and its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, \u00a0producing this beautiful new image. This famous object, the birthplace of many massive stars, is one of the closest stellar nurseries, at a distance of about 1350 light-years. On this plot different populations of young stars are marked in different colours. The blue ones are oldest and the red youngest, with green ones an intermediate age. These stars seems to have formed in three bursts of star formation during the last three million years. [Larger image<\/a>]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>But this is more than just a pretty picture. A team led by ESO astronomer Giacomo Beccari has used these data of unparallelled quality to precisely measure the brightness and colours of all the stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster. These measurements allowed the astronomers to determine the mass and ages of the stars. To their surprise, the data revealed three different sequences of potentially different ages.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the data for the first time was one of those \u2018Wow!\u2019 moments that happen only once or twice in an astronomer’s lifetime,<\/em>\u201d says Beccari, lead \u00adauthor of the paper presenting the results. \u201cThe incredible quality of the OmegaCAM images revealed without any doubt that we were seeing three distinct populations of stars in the central parts of Orion.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Monika Petr-Gotzens, co-author and also based at ESO Garching, continues,<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an important result. What we are witnessing is that the stars of a cluster at the beginning of their lives didn\u2019t form altogether simultaneously. This may mean that our understanding of how stars form in clusters needs to be modified.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n