Ancient Cluster Still Producing Stars

[Christopher K.]

Texas A&M Professor Kim-Vy Tran and her colleagues have discovered that the extremely distant star cluster CLG J02182-05102 produces at least hundred of new stars annually--maybe thousands.

Casey Papovich discovered the cluster in May. At that time he was quoted as saying, "We are seeing something already aged and red like a younger version of the Coma Cluster from a distant, bygone era." Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound objects in the Universe.

A quite bizarre aspect of this discovery is that the star births are happening at a higher rate in the center than at the edges of the cluster. That's the opposite of what we observe in the local section of the Universe.

MIPS is a far-infrared photometer--an imaging camera, but for wavelengths of 24, 70 and 160 microns. MIPS can also perform simple spectroscopy.

Original Press Release:
http://www.science.tamu.edu/articles/753

More about Dr. Papovich:
http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/papovich/

May info on the Discovery:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-157

More on MIPS:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/mission/ ... eter-MIPS-

[Christopher K.]

Well, to no surprise it made Berman's list of strangest objects. The list is quite fun to peruse, and this anomalous shouldn't-be-so-developed thing is right at home.

More information:
https://astronomy.com/magazine/weirdest ... 2182-05102