How many types of stars live in other galaxies? It seems like a simple question, but it’s hard to determine because astronomers have a hard time estimating star clusters in distant galaxies.
A team of astronomers has already counted more than 140,000 galaxies and found that more distant galaxies usually have heavier stars.
number of stars
Although astronomers lack the full number of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, they have taken enough samples from them to get a good attitude towards the population.
We know approximately how many small dwarf stars, how many Sun-like intermediate stars, and how many giant stars there are.
But repeat this exercise for other galaxies Too difficult. Most galaxies are too far from identifying and measuring the individual stars in them.
We only see their brightest and heaviest stars, and we have to guess the smaller constellations.
Astronomers usually assume that the demographics of a distant galaxy roughly coincide with what we see in the Milky Way, because on average, galaxies should not differ too much from each other.
Recently, a team of astronomers used the COSMOS catalog to study 140,000 individual galaxies, developing techniques for estimating the number of stars in each.
The study was conducted at the Space Dawn Center (DAWN), an international center for basic research in astronomy with the support of the Danish National Research Foundation. DAWN is a collaboration between the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the DTU Space at the Technical University of Denmark.
The future fate of heavier galaxies
“We’ve only been able to see the tip of the iceberg, and we’ve known for a long time that expecting other galaxies to look like ours isn’t a very good guess. However, no one was able to prove this. Galaxies form different groups of stars. This study allowed us to do. This could open the door to a deeper understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, “said Associate Professor Charles Steinhardt, co-author of the study.
The team found that mid-range galaxies typically have stars larger than the Milky Way. On the other hand, nearby galaxies were relatively similar to ours.
“The mass of stars says a lot to astronomers. If you change the mass, you also change the number of supernovae and black holes that arise from massive stars. As such, our result means that we will have to reconsider many things we once assumed, because distant galaxies look very different from ours, “said Albert Sneben, a graduate student at the Niels Bohr Institute and the first author of the study.
This work has several important implications.
First, astronomers can no longer assume the existence of the same group of stars when looking at distant galaxies, which are the smallest galaxies to appear in the universe. It also forces us to rethink how galaxies evolve. for billions of years.
“Now that we are better able to decipher the mass of the stars, we can see a new model; more massive galaxies continue to form stars, while more massive galaxies stop producing new stars. This shows a marked global trend towards the death of galaxies, “Snipin concluded.
This article was originally published by universe Today. Read the original article.
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