The center of the Milky Way is an exotic place dominated by powerful radiation and gravity. Young stars shouldn't form there, but they do.
Astronomers examining a star cluster near Sgr A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, found that the cluster has some unusually young members for its location. That’s difficult to explain since the region so close to the powerful black hole is infused with powerful radiation and dominated by the black hole’s extremely powerful gravitational force. According to our understanding of stellar formation, young stars shouldn’t be there.
There are several stumbling blocks facing astronomers trying to understand IRS 13 and how it formed. Much of what lies inside the cluster is embedded in thick gas and dust. There are two distinct generations of stars in the cluster, and there’s also a disk structure containing the youngest stars. How does it all fit together?
This sketch from the study shows how the young stellar objects in the cluster emit different wavelengths of energy. As different astronomers observed IRS 13 over the years, they arrived at different conclusions. Image Credit: Peißker et al. 2023. This image from the study shows IRS 13’s unusual shape. The older stars are in the core, and the YSOs are in the tip. The researchers think the tip is a bow shock created when the cluster was pulled toward the SMBH by its powerful gravity. The cluster’s supersonic speed, its stellar winds, and the ISM created a bow shock. The increased pressure at the bow shock drove the cluster’s second round of star formation a few hundred thousand years ago. Image Credit: Peißker et al. 2023.
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