Comments on: Hey neighbor! Welcome our newest found stellar cousin

By: bouncer

bouncer — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 05:02:44 +0000

I enjoy your articles and the layout of your site. I will visit your blog again.

By: jess tauber

jess tauber — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:17:55 +0000

AS I’VE POSTED BEFORE- Westerlund I beats this hands down. Half a million stars in an even smaller volume. And dem stars is NEW, too! Lots of blue giants ready to go boom. No old bag of bones like this wheezing corpse. They have Godzilla vs. Rodan, Freddy vs. Jason, and Alien vs. Predator. So let’s go, bring it on….!

By: Johnny Vector

Johnny Vector — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:40:37 +0000

100,000 stars packed into a sphere 7 Lt. Years in diameter? What a SciFi story that would enable.

It’s called “Nightfall”, and it was written by Isaac Asimov. (I haven’t read the novel, but the short story is a classic, even if the gravitational physics wouldn’t really work out.)

I’d link to it, but who knows if these comments will accept links? I’ll just paraphrase Jayne: Sure would be nice if we had some PREVIEW, dont’cha think?

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:20:24 +0000

Ah, globular clusters. So round. So firm. So fully packed,,,

Oh, wait, I was thinking of a tobacco commercial,,,

,,,never mind,,,

100,000 stars packed into a sphere 7 Lt. Years in diameter? What a SciFi story that would enable. Just think, Fire Fly could reach any star in the cluster in a single human life time, even at sub-light velocities. So many stories,,,

I wonder, what is the closest dense cluster to our old solar system? Just for the sake of possible ScfFi stories?

GAry 7

By: andy

andy — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:03:00 +0000

Currently, we know of only one planet in a globular cluster, orbiting a close pulsar-white dwarf binary. The millisecond pulsar is designated PSR B1620-26, and the system is the only triple system known in a globular cluster.

By: dkary

dkary — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:21:06 +0000

In fact, there are 2 problems with having a planet in a cluster like this. The first is the lack of metals, as Tim G pointed out. However, even if you could make a jovian-type planet without much metal (I have my doubts, but some folks think it’s possible) then there is the problem of all of those neighbors. In such a dense cluster, it becomes likely that another star will pass within a few AU of the any possible planet’s star, scattering the planets right out of the system. The same process means that binaries are quite rare in globular cluster systems.

Does anyone have an estimate now of how many more clusters are likely to be lurking on the other side of the galactic center near the plane of the galaxy? We should be able to make a pretty good statistical argument just based on how much of the sky is hard to see in that direction (and allowing for the increased consentration of clusters around the bulge). Or are IR studies like this one simply making it too hard for any of those clusters to hide now?

By: wright

wright — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:01:55 +0000

Wow, thanks for that link, Phil. Some fascinating stuff there.

I was aware that globular clusters were relatively old, and mostly Population II stars. I had no idea their projected “lifespan” as stellar groups was correspondingly great… amazing.