Westerlund 2
A young star cluster with some of the most massive stars known.
Tucked within the glowing gas cloud RCW 49, the Westerlund 2 star cluster is only one or two million years old and may be a super star cluster. Located 20,000 light-years away in Carina, this compact, hidden grouping contains some of the most massive, hottest, and brightest stars ever found.
Quick Facts
- Credit
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Constellation
- Carina
- Names
- ESO 127-18, VDBH 95
Facts from the source article.
Cluster members
The cluster contains at least a dozen early O stars, of which at least three are eclipsing binaries; all are hotter than 38,000 K and more luminous than the Sun. Around 20 further O class stars in the cluster are all main sequence objects, implying a very young age. Several Wolf–Rayet stars are found in the vicinity of Westerlund 2, though not in the central core. WR 20a, a binary of two WR stars, and the single stars WR 20aa, WR 20b, and WR 20c are all thought to be members, possibly now runaway members. These five Wolf Rayets have OIf/WN spectral types, indicating young very massive hydrogen-burning stars just starting to convect nitrogen and helium to the surface and develop denser stellar winds. WR21a, itself a massive binary, lies in the same direction but is unlikely to be a member. Westerlund 2 also contains a large number of pre-main sequence stars with masses below the Sun, constraining the cluster age to near 2 Myr.
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