CHENGDU, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese astronomers have identified a pair of young, blue "baby star clusters" on the outskirts of the Milky Way, approximately 45,000 light-years from Earth. They have named the twin clusters Emei-1 and Emei-2.
The discovery, made by a research team from the School of Physics and Astronomy at China West Normal University, was published online on Wednesday in Nature Astronomy.
"Baby star clusters" are aggregates of very young stars in the early stages of formation. Distinguished by their recent birth, these stars appear noticeably bluer and brighter than their older counterparts. In the context of the vast timescale of the cosmos, they are true "newborns."
He Zhihong, associate professor at the university and the paper's first author, said that by tracing the clusters' origins, researchers determined they were born from a violent collision between two dense gas clumps about 11 million years ago.
"This dramatic event occurred within a high-velocity cloud of gas that was streaming toward the Milky Way. The intense pressure generated by this collision created an extremely compressed environment, which miraculously ignited the birth of this pair of star clusters," He said.
For a long time, astronomers observing high-velocity clouds could detect only gas, never any signs of stars. This discovery of the "Emei" clusters confirms that such clouds can, under extreme conditions, give rise to stars -- a finding that fundamentally revises people's understanding of where stars can form.
It also provides direct observational evidence supporting the theory that the Milky Way nurtures new stars by accreting fresh gas from its surroundings. ■
