A team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) studied numerous stars of Globular clusters and discovered He-enhanced cool bright stars among the metal-rich sample of Omega Centauri.
This work, a result of the spectroscopic survey conducted of this cluster, determines the He-abundance of these stars for the first time and has been published in ‘The Astrophysical Journal’.
What is Globular Clusters?
Globular clusters are the stellar systems with millions of stars formed from the same gaseous cloud. Hence, usually, the stars formed will be homogeneous in their chemical composition of elemental abundances.
But, there are clusters which deviate from this norm. One is being Omega Centauri, the brightest and the largest globular cluster in our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
The different stars of Omega Centauri do not show the same metal content, a parameter that indicates its age, but a large range in it.
Due to the anomalous elemental abundances, the formation scenario may be different from normal. Normally, the abundances are derived using the assumption that He is one-tenth of the H-abundance.
