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MADRID, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- A team of astronomers in Spain recently analyzed a unique star cluster they say is a remnant of the earliest days of the Milky Way. When the Milky Way was first born, the galaxy was filled with globular clusters like ESO 37-1, or E 3. But over the last few billion years, these spherical stellar groupings have disappeared.
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Today, there are 200 globular clusters within the confines of the Milky Way, but E 3 is one of a handful nearly as old as the galaxy itself. E 3 is situated 30,000 light-years away in the constellation Chameleon.
Astronomers' latest E 3 observations -- secured using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope -- were detailed in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"This globular cluster, and a few similar ones -- such as Palomar 5 or Palomar 14 -- are 'ghosts' because they appear to be in the last stages of their existence, and we say 'from the past' because they are very old," study author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, an astronomer with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, said in a press release. "They were formed when our galaxy was virtually new-born, 13,000 million years ago."
The star population and shape of E 3 reveals the cluster's age. Unlike most globular clusters, which often feature millions of stars, E 3 hosts just a few thousand. Its spherical shape has also become withered and warped over time.
"It doesn't have the typical circular symmetry, but a much distorted, almost ghostly, rhomboidal shape, contorted by the galactic gravitational waves," de la Fuente Marcos said.
But before astronomers can point to E 3 as a mirror to the Milky Way's early composition, it must first be confirmed the cluster was born alongside the galaxy and not captured later as a young Milky Way cannibalized smaller galactic neighbors.
"We hope to obtain new data in 2016, thanks to more spectroscopic observations, and perhaps we will be able to give answers to these questions," said de la Fuente Marcos.
