Here鈥檚 an apple that landed far from the tree. A dim star just 13 light years from Earth was born in a cluster 17,000 light years away.
Discovered in 1897, is the 25th nearest star system to our sun, but it is no local, says of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra.
The cool star鈥檚 composition is tricky to study, but astronomers can look at 16 other stars in the same 鈥渕oving group鈥�, all of which orbit the galaxy backwards and are very old. The odd motion marks them as members of the Milky Way鈥檚 ancient population of halo stars.
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Of the stars, 14 had the same abundance of elements 鈥� such as sodium, magnesium, zirconium, barium 鈥� as , the galaxy鈥檚 most luminous globular cluster. The cluster emits a million times more light than the sun.
鈥淚t鈥檚 long been thought that Omega Centauri is the left-over nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way,鈥� says Wylie-de Boer, whose will appear in the . 鈥淒uring the merger, the outer regions of this dwarf galaxy were stripped.鈥�
Some of the cast-off stars ended up near the Sun, with one landing a mere 13 light years from Earth.
