Astronomers uncover 1000’s of hidden siblings of the “Seven Sisters”

Most stars, together with the Sun, type inside teams. As they age, these teams step by step disperse, which makes it tough to trace which stars had been born collectively. Astronomers can use stellar rotation as a “cosmic clock,” since younger stars spin shortly and older stars decelerate over time. The UNC-Chapel Hill crew used this system to find many long-lost members of the Pleiades unfold far past the central cluster. With rotation knowledge from NASA’s TESS and exact measurements from ESA’s Gaia, they concluded that the Pleiades isn’t a compact grouping however the dense core of a a lot bigger and slowly dispersing stellar affiliation.

“This study changes how we see the Pleiades — not just seven bright stars, but thousands of long-lost siblings scattered across the whole sky,” mentioned Andrew Boyle, lead creator and graduate pupil in physics and astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Cultural Significance and Expanding Scientific Insight

The discovery reaches past astrophysics. The Pleiades has lengthy served as a key reference level for understanding younger stars and exoplanets, and it holds cultural that means throughout many societies. It seems within the Old Testament and the Talmud, is honored as Matariki in New Zealand, and is depicted within the emblem of Subaru in Japan. “We’re realizing that many stars near the Sun are part of massive extended stellar families with complex structures,” mentioned Andrew Mann, co-author and professor of physics and astronomy at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Our work provides a new way to uncover these hidden relationships.”

Mapping Hidden Structures within the Milky Way

By finding out how stars rotate, the researchers developed a brand new method to map our area of the Galaxy. Their findings counsel that many star clusters as soon as considered remoted may very well belong to a lot bigger stellar households. This technique could finally assist scientists examine the Sun’s personal origins and decide whether or not it fashioned inside a equally intensive stellar group.

“By measuring how stars spin, we can identify stellar groups too scattered to detect with traditional methods — opening a new window into the hidden architecture of our Galaxy,” Boyle mentioned.

Understanding How Solar Systems Form

The analysis contributes to ongoing efforts to reconstruct the environments through which stars and planets are born. These insights are important for understanding how photo voltaic techniques, together with our personal, take form and evolve over time.

The analysis paper is accessible on-line in The Astrophysical Journal.