March 24, 2017

The runaway stars and their positions (Image NASA, ESA, K. Luhman (Penn State University), and M. Robberto (STScI))

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes a research about what used to be a multiple system in the Orion Nebula. A team of researchers led by Kevin Luhman of Penn State University used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover a runaway star that was part of the original system with two other stars already known that are also traveling at high speeds. The three stars were part of a single system untile about 540 years ago.