More stars uncovered …
VISTA finds 96 star clusters hidden behind dust
Quote:
Using data from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has discovered 96 new open clusters hidden by the dust in the Milky Way.
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By using carefully tuned computer software, the team was able to remove the foreground stars appearing in front of each cluster in order to count the genuine cluster members. Afterwards, they made visual inspections of the images to measure the cluster sizes, and for the more populous clusters they made other measurements such as distance, age, and the amount of reddening of their starlight caused by interstellar dust between them and us.
"We found that most of the clusters are very small and only have about 10-20 stars. Compared to typical open clusters, these are very faint and compact objects -- the dust in front of these clusters makes them appear 10 000 to 100 million times fainter in visible light. It's no wonder they were hidden," explains Radostin Kurtev, another member of the team.
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Since antiquity only 2500 open clusters have been found in the Milky Way, but astronomers estimate there might be as many as 30 000 still hiding behind the dust and gas.
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… one for those image processers out there ... one step beyond skyglow removal, eh ? (Mind you they used the 4.1m VISTA infrared setup to do it).
96 down, ~30K more clusters to go ! Cool !
Cheers