TODAYS COOLEST COSMIC STORY: Did Our Solar System Originate in a Distant Star Cluster? Is it possible that our original home exists as a great collection of stars, a star cluster known as Messier 67 (shown above), a gathering of suns and stellar remnants some 2,700 light-years distant that contains more than a hundred stars that bear a striking resemblance to the Sun. Astronomers have searched for star clusters in our galaxy whose members come close to matching the Sun’s elemental composition and age. This past January, astronomers using ESOs HARPS planet hunter in Chile, along with other telescopes around the world, discovered three planets orbiting stars in the cluster Messier 67 shown above. Although more than one thousand planets outside the Solar System are now confirmed, only a handful have been found in star clusters. Remarkably one of these new exoplanets is orbiting a star that is a rare solar twin — a star that is almost identical to the Sun in all respects. Read more at: dailygalaxy/my_weblog/2014/09/was-our-solar-system-once-ejected-from-a-distant-star-cluster-.html
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:15:01 +0000
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