CANADA: Using European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, researchers spotted juvenile stars hidden in the forest of thick dust clouds in the Milky Way’s center. Astronomers are amazed to discover a group of young stars in our galaxy because it has been thought previously that Milky Way contains only older stars and has already used up all of its star-making material long way ago. The observations were conducted between 2010 and 2014.
Until now, researchers believed that the Milky Way’s central area comprises only of older stars, but according to a new study, the area continued to generate new stars.
Mapping the Cepheids, the team also traced an entirely new feature in the Milky Way – a thin disc of young stars across the galactic bulge.
The astronomers found 655 variable stars called Cepheids that “expand and contract periodically, taking anything from a few days to months to complete a cycle and changing significantly in brightness as they do so”, the team explained. The researchers used Cepheids to measure the distance of other galaxies in the Milky Way.
These stars pulses at predictable rate, allowing researchers to calculate cosmic distance accurately. Analysing data from the survey, the astronomers found 655 candidate variable stars of a type called Cepheids.
The youngest of the lot might be as young as 25 million years but they are not excluding the possibility of younger Cepheids in the celestial region. Study’s co-author, Dante Minniti of the Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile, said that all the classical Cepheids are less than 100 million years old.
