Stars Of Varied Ages Can Co-Exist In Open Clusters

Using the 1.3-m telescope at Devasthal (Uttarakhand) astronomers at the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) have found that stars of varied ages can co-exist in open clusters. This challenges earlier understanding that stars in an open cluster have the same age.
Open star clusters are a system of stars bound by gravity in which stars are born from the same molecular clouds. All the stars in a cluster follow the evolutionary sequence as per their initial masses at the time of formation of these stars. Open clusters are also important in probing formation and evolution of Milky Way Galaxy as they are distributed throughout the Galactic disk.
Stellar Evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time depending on the mass of the star.