The Westerlund 1 cluster: A giant stellar nursery amidst darkness
Stars tend to form in clusters or groups of between ten and several thousand stars that share the same age and composition, although in different evolutionary phases. Among the clusters in the Milky Way, the very young Westerlund 1 (Wd 1) cluster stands out in its inner regions. With an age of less than ten million years—for comparison, the sun is five billion years old—it is considered the most massive cluster in our galaxy. Its population is an ideal laboratory for studying massive stars, yet hidden behind a dusty region that makes it difficult to study. Now, a team of scientists has broken through this “darkness” to estimate the cluster’s distance with high precision, and analyze the surrounding stellar population.
phys.org
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