With the help of detailed observations, astronomers have managed to get a first representative glimpse of the numerous young stars in the central regions of our home galaxy. The observations provide evidence for star formation in the Galactic Center having started off near the center and then worked its way outwards. This confirms a mode of star formation that had earlier been found in the centers of other, distant galaxies. The results also reveal that most stars in that region did not form in tightly-bound massive clusters, but in loose associations whose member stars have long since gone their separate ways. The results have been published in Nature Astronomy.
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