More globular star clusters found at Milky Way's heart (earthsky.org)
By Deborah Byrd in Space | January 27, 2019
We think of globular clusters as being scattered far from the galaxys central regions, in the great spherical halo of our Milky Way. But astronomers are finding them much closer to the galactic center.
Astronomer Denilso Camargo in Brazil emailed EarthSky last week with word of a newly published study, on the discovery of three more ancient globular clusters in the bulge what these astronomers are calling the heart of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The discovery follows a similar one from 2018 by Camargo, in which he announced five globular star clusters near the heart of the Milky Way.
The discovery is unusual because we dont think of the large, symmetrical globular clusters as residing near the Milky Ways center. Instead, we think of these ancient clusters which are thought to contain some of our galaxys oldest stars as belonging to the halo of the galaxy, a more or less spherical region surrounding the galaxys center.
Camargo and his co-author astronomer Dante Minniti in Chile communicated their discovery a new paper published January 21, 2019, by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. Camargo wrote:
The new findings add entries to my star cluster catalog and thus they are called Camargo 1107, 1108, and 1109.
The two astronomers examined photometric data gathered by NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, as well as data from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). Plus they used data from the European Southern Observatorys (ESO) VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea extended survey (VVVX) and from the European Space Agencys Gaia satellite particularly its amazing second data release, made available last April.
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more:
https://earthsky.org/space/globular-clusters-milky-way-heart-bulge-camargo