ANN ARBOR, Mich.—New observations by University of Michigan
astronomers add weight to the theory that the most massive stars
in the universe could form essentially anywhere, including in
near isolation; they don’t need a large stellar cluster nursery.
The universe’s most massive stars can form in near isolation,
new study finds This is the most detailed observational study to
date of massive stars that appear (from the ground) to be alone.
The scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to zoom in on
eight of these giants, which range from 20 to 150 times as
massive as the Sun. The stars they looked at are in the Small
Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that’s one of the Milky Way’s
nearest neighbors. Their results, published in the Dec. 20
edition of the Astrophysical Journal, show that five of the
stars had no neighbors large enough for Hubble to discern. The
remaining three appeared to be in tiny clusters of ten or fewer
stars. Doctoral student Joel Lamb and associate professor Sally
Oey, both in the Departme