Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. Relics of the early years of the universe, with ages of typically 12–13 billion years — the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago — there are roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way, and they contain many of our galaxy’s oldest stars.
But while the stars are old and the clusters formed in the distant past, astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found that some of these clusters are still young at heart.
“Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago, we wondered whether some might be aging faster or slower than others,” said Francesco Ferraro from the University of Bologna In Italy. “By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of aging.”
Star clusters form in a short period of time, meaning that all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, there should only be low-mass stars still shining within them.
This, however, turns out not to be the case: In certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life, receiving extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them. This can happen if one star pulls matter off a close neighbor, or if they collide. The re-invigorated stars are called blue stragglers, and their high masses and brightnesses are properties that lie at the heart of this study.
Heavier stars sink toward the center of a cluster as the cluster ages in a process similar to sedimentation. Blue stragglers’ high masses mean they are strongly affected by this process, while their brightnesses makes them relatively easy to observe.
To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue straggler stars in 21 globular clusters. Hubble provided high-resolution imagery of the crowded centers of 20 of the clusters, while the ground-based imagery gave a wider view of their less busy outer regions.
Analyzing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young with blue straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old with the blue stragglers clumped in the center. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inward first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking toward the center.
“Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster,” said Barbara Lanzoni from the University of Bologna. “In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the universe.”
As a cluster’s heaviest stars sink toward the center, the cluster eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse where the center of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading toward core collapse are quite well understood and revolve around the number, density, and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happened was not known until now. This study provides the first empirical evidence of how quickly different globular clusters age.
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. Relics of the early years of the universe, with ages of typically 12–13 billion years — the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago — there are roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way, and they contain many of our galaxy’s oldest stars.
But while the stars are old and the clusters formed in the distant past, astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found that some of these clusters are still young at heart.
“Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago, we wondered whether some might be aging faster or slower than others,” said Francesco Ferraro from the University of Bologna In Italy. “By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of aging.”
Star clusters form in a short period of time, meaning that all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, there should only be low-mass stars still shining within them.
This, however, turns out not to be the case: In certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life, receiving extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them. This can happen if one star pulls matter off a close neighbor, or if they collide. The re-invigorated stars are called blue stragglers, and their high masses and brightnesses are properties that lie at the heart of this study.
Heavier stars sink toward the center of a cluster as the cluster ages in a process similar to sedimentation. Blue stragglers’ high masses mean they are strongly affected by this process, while their brightnesses makes them relatively easy to observe.
To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue straggler stars in 21 globular clusters. Hubble provided high-resolution imagery of the crowded centers of 20 of the clusters, while the ground-based imagery gave a wider view of their less busy outer regions.
Analyzing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young with blue straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old with the blue stragglers clumped in the center. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inward first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking toward the center.
“Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster,” said Barbara Lanzoni from the University of Bologna. “In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the universe.”
As a cluster’s heaviest stars sink toward the center, the cluster eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse where the center of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading toward core collapse are quite well understood and revolve around the number, density, and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happened was not known until now. This study provides the first empirical evidence of how quickly different globular clusters age.
