Indian scientists find 2 neighboring star clusters 4,892 light-years away
Indian scientists just uncovered not one, but two separate star clusters, UBC 63A and UBC 63B, around 4,892 light-years from Earth.
Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission (plus a little help from machine learning), the team figured out these clusters are actually neighbors in space, not a single group as once thought.
Gauhati University finds 23 light-year encounter
Turns out, UBC 63A is about 21 million years old and UBC 63B is much older at roughly 562 million years.
They had a close encounter just six million years ago, coming within only 23 light-years of each other, which gives astronomers a rare look at how star clusters interact and evolve over time.
The findings, led by Gauhati University researchers, could help us better understand how stellar systems interact and evolve.