Giant Cluster is Spitting Out Massive Stars

Artistic impression of star cluster R136 with runaway stars. Credit: Danielle Futselaar, James Webb Space Telescope/NIRCam - NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI

We live inside the Milky Way galaxy which is joined as it drifts through space by two satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. A star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud known as R136 has been the subject of a fascinating discovery. A team of astronomers have discovered 55 high-speed stars that have been ejected from the cluster. The discovery was made using the Gaia satellite and it seems up to a third of stars from the cluster have been ejected in the last century. 

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