Researchers have shared new visuals of the Teutsch 76 open cluster, often called T76. A preprint discussing these findings appears on archive.org.
Open clusters like Teutsch 76 are collections of stars that orbit together under gravity but are only loosely bound. In the Milky Way, more than a thousand such assemblies have been identified so far, and astronomers keep hunting for more to map our galaxy’s history.
Saurab Sharma from the ARIES Indian Institute, along with colleagues, captured Teutsch 76 using the 3.6-meter DOT telescope in a bid to uncover the cluster’s physical properties. The research also relied on data from the Gaia space observatory and the Pan-STARRS1 ground-based survey to build a clearer picture of the cluster’s structure and environment.
According to the paper, the team conducted a thorough analysis with the TIFR-ARIES near-infrared spectrometer recently installed on the 3.6-meter telescope aboard Devastal. This instrument enabled a deeper look at stellar spectra and dynamics, shedding light on how T76 may have evolved over time.
From their measurements, the cluster’s radius is about 4.04 light-years. The estimate places Teutsch 76 at roughly 50 million years old, and its distance from Earth is around 18,600 light-years. These figures help place T76 within the broader map of the Milky Way’s young stellar populations and inform models of cluster formation and dissolution.
Expanding and detailing the census of open clusters supports broader questions about how the galaxy, and the universe beyond it, have changed over billions of years. Each new cluster adds a data point to trace star formation rates, chemical enrichment, and the gravitational interactions that shape stellar groups as they age.
An additional note from the night of February 15-16 mentions a large asteroid that passed by Earth, underscoring how observing the night sky continues to connect planetary science with stellar studies and cosmic history.