Recently, a team of astronomers led by Qin Songmei of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China reported the discovery of 101 new open clusters inMilky Way galaxy After applying a clustering algorithm to Gaia’s Data Release 3 (DR3) data, Songmei’s team was able to identify 324 open clusters with the European Space Agency’s tool, 101 of which had never been reported before. .open clusterin the immediate vicinity, within 1,600 light-years of Earth
Among these newly discovered open clusters There are 19 pairs of open clusters that share a common origin. The age difference between them is less than 30 million years, and there is also an open cluster of triplets less than 65 light years apart, but the age difference is less than 10 million years.molecular cloudExactly the same.
Credit: Songmei et al., 2022
