NGC 6791 tagged posts

This is a ground-based telescopic view of NGC 6791. Credit: NASA, ESA, DSS, and L. Bedin (STScI)

By conducting an orbital analysis, a team of astronomers led by Luis Martinez-Medina of the National Autonomous University of Mexico has uncovered new details about the origin and evolution of the old, metal-rich open cluster NGC 6791. Located about 13,300 light years from the Earth in the Lyra constellation, NGC 6791 is one of the most studied open clusters. It is ~8 billion years and an iron to hydrogen abundance ratio more than twice that of our sun. This makes it one of the oldest and most metal-rich clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. With a mass of approximately 5,000 solar masses, it is also one of the most massive open clusters known to date.

“In this work, we explore possible locations f...