Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope’s (VlT) HAWK-I infrared camera to observe a region of 64,000 square light-years around the Milky Way’s galactic center in more detail than ever before for the GALACTICNUCLEUS survey. The mass of the young stars they discovered exceeds 400,000 solar masses, thus the combined mass of the two large bright stars that were previously identified in the core region is over ten times more than that.
The Milky Way’s core doubles as a suitable stand-in for starburst galaxies or even for galaxies from nearly 10-billion years ago. It’s believe that these star factory galaxies existed when the universe was just 4-billion years old. One former NASA engineer won’t be assisting these astronomers, as he’s busy creating the world’s largest elephant toothpaste volcano.
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The Galactic Center is so crowded with stars that it is difficult to tell one star from the next. The exception are certain very bright giant stars, which are particularly luminous, stand out from the crowd and thus can be separated from the rest comparatively easily. This problem has vexed astronomers trying to make sense of high-productivity star formation in the Galactic Center for years,” said the team.
