Arches Cluster

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1 Information
2 Research
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Information

The Arches Cluster is the most dense star cluster in the Milky Way. This cluster is about 100 light years away from the center of our galaxy. The radius of this cluster is around one light year. There are 150 or more young and scorching stars in this cluster. These stars are enormous, 20 times bigger than our Sun, but they will not have a long life. They will live for only a few million years. Inside this star cluster is hot gas made from collisions of the solar winds from the stars.

From research on this star cluster and it's other partner, the Quintuplet cluster, they are two to four million years old. Due to high gravity, these stars will enter a supernova and/or be ripped apart by the gravity. With the stars in the Arches Cluster, it could fill gap that is 4.3 light years between our sun and Alpha Centauri.

[edit] Research

Recent work by Donald Figer, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, suggests that 150 solar masses is the upper limit of stars in the current era of the universe.^[1] He used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe about a thousand stars in the Arches cluster and found no stars over that limit despite a statistical expectation that there should be several.