(ORDO NEWS) — Using data from ESA‘s Gaia satellite, astronomers from Taiwan and India have explored an open cluster known as Berkeley 27. The results of the study were published Sept. 22 on arXiv.org.
Open clusters are groups of stars formed from the same giant molecular cloud. The stars in such clusters are bound together by relatively weak gravitational forces. To date, over 1,000 open clusters have been discovered in the Milky Way.
Berkeley 27 (or Be 27 for short) is a sparsely populated middle-aged open cluster located in the third quadrant of the Milky Way towards the galactic anticenter region.
Its age is approximately 2 billion years, and its metallicity is 0.03. However, many properties of Be 27 are still unknown, and its stellar composition remains poorly understood.
A team of astronomers led by Devesh P. Sariya of the National Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan analyzed Gaia data release 3 (DR3) for the Be 27 study.
Astronomers have been able to identify 131 of the most likely members of the Be 27 cluster. The radius of the cluster has been estimated at 3.74 arc minutes.
The study also found two blue stragglers located in the central region. The cluster is 15,600 light-years away and has been estimated to be 2.29 billion years old.
Using simulations, scientists have found that Be 27 follows a circular path around the center of the Galaxy.
According to the authors of the article, the results obtained indicate that Be 27 has been located in the thick disk of our galaxy since its formation and until now. The cluster does not appear to be strongly affected by tidal forces from the galactic thin disk.
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