2026-04-01
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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 Ermay 1 and Ermay 2.
The discovery, made by a research team from the School of Physics and Astronomy at China West Normal University,
has been published on the journal 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 Jihang, associate professor at the university and the paper's first author,
said that by tracing the cluster's origins,
researchers determined they were born from a violent collision between two dense gas clumps about 11 million years ago.
He said 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.