Astronomer Denilso Camargo, from the Brazilian Ministry of Defense's Military College in Porto Alegre, has made a remarkable discovery. After combing through data gathered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite and analyzing telescope images of the Milky Way, Camargo has managed to find not one, but five rare globular clusters tucked away in the center of our galaxy.
This type of star clusters, recognized by their spherical shape and named after the Latin word for sphere, "regulus," are incredibly old. Crammed with hundreds of thousands of stars, globular clusters are ancient and very dense star bundles that date back almost to the beginning of the universe.
'Living Fossils' From Our Galaxy's Early Days
In fact, according to the Brazilian media outlet Revista Galileu, the five globular clusters recently discovered by Camargo are between 12.5 and 13.5 billion-years-old and have formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
"Globular clusters were the first stellar systems formed in the early universe and are often considered as living fossils of the galaxy's formation," explained Camargo.
The newly discovered globular clusters are now known as Camargo 1102, 1103, 1104, 1105, and 1106, and have been spotted by the astronomer in the central region of the Milky Way, also called the galactic bulge.