96 stars were discovered in the Milky Way

International astronomers have discovered 96 new cluster stars hidden behind dust in the Milky Way after studying data from the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory.

VISTA, the world's largest surveying telescope of the European Agency for Southern Hemisphere Astronomical Research, has an ultra-sensitive infrared detection system capable of releasing dust and easily observing small stellar beams and blur behind the clouds.

Star clusters are found to have half the mass of the Sun and are called "open clusters". They are formed in dusty areas. These clumps of dust absorb most of the light emitted by newly formed star clusters and make them invisible to previous astronomical observations.

Using data from the VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory astronomers have discovered 96 new star clusters hidden behind dust clouds in the Milky Way galaxy. Source: ScienceDaily

With carefully tuned computer software, the team can remove the front stars of each cluster in order to count the official stars, then they visually check the image to measure the size. , distance, age, and light emitted from the stars.

"We found that the star clusters were very small and most of the clusters had 10-20 stars. Compared to other open clusters, they were quite fuzzy and small because of the obscure dust clouds in the front , " Radostin Kurtev, one team members said.

So far only about 2,500 open clusters have been found in the Milky Way. However, scientists estimate that about 30,000 similar star clusters are hiding in dust and gas.