‘Orphan’ stars among mind-bending finds by Europe’s new space telescope
The universe can be a lonely place – especially if you’re an orphan star, kicked out your galaxy and left to roam the dark expanse of nothingness outside.
But those orphan stars aren’t really alone, as the new Euclid space telescope has spotted 1,500 billion of them in the first scientific pictures taken as part of its mission.
The orphan stars, which give off a ghostly blueish light, were all spotted wandering the space between the Perseus cluster of galaxies.
The Perseus cluster lies 240 million light-years from Earth – with one light-year about six trillion miles – and is one of the universe’s most massive structures, containing thousands of individual galaxies.
Stars form in interstellar molecular clouds within galaxies, starting life as clumps of dust and gas.
Now, giving off a blueish hue and arranged in clusters, astronomers from the University of Nottingham think the stars were either torn from the outskirts of galaxies, or are survivors of dwarf galaxies that have been completely disrupted.
Professor Nina Hatch, who led the project team, said: ‘We were surprised by our ability to see so far into the outer regions of the cluster and discern the subtle colours of this light. This light can help us map dark matter if we understand where the intracluster stars came from.
‘By studying their colours, luminosity, and configurations, we found they originated from small galaxies.’
The orphan stars are just one of the incredible finds made by Euclid in a set of stunning images released today.
Also on display are the breathtaking Messier 78 star nursery, the swirling galaxy NGC 6744 (catchy name) and the Dorado galaxy group.
Closer to home, an image of the Abell 2764 galaxy cluster also shows off a shining star in our own galaxy.
And one final image shows off a frankly mind-blowing 50,000 galaxies in the Abell 2390 cluster – something that will get you thinking about whether humans can really be the only form of intelligent life in the universe…
What is Euclid?
Euclid, which launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida last July, has been launched by the European Space Agency to explore the composition and evolution of the dark universe. Over the next seven years it will observe billions of galaxies and map more than a third of the sky.
The telescope is fitted with two instruments, the VISible instruments (VIS) designed to take ‘super sharp images of billions of galaxies to measure their shapes’ and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP), which captures the universe in infrared.
Images released last year showed the famous Horsehead Nebula in stunning detail alongside several galaxies including IC 342, aka the ‘Hidden Galaxy’.