New Star System Discovered

By Isabelle Parker

(Micheal Jones)

Newly found blue stars in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster have given evidence of a new type of star system created when galaxies collide with hot gas. The stars were discovered when a team of researchers in the Netherlands compiled images of gas clouds that could be galaxies, and several other research groups started looking for stars that could be associated with them. The researchers were surprised by the lack of gas and old, dead stars in the galaxies, which suggest that they have lost their gas recently. There two main explanations for this, but the favoured one is 'ram pressure stripping'.

Study Author States,

“When a galaxy belly flops into a cluster that is full of hot gas, then its gas gets forced out behind it. That’s the mechanism that we think we’re seeing here to create these objects.”