The open Star Cluster Trumpler 14 with more than 2000 stars resembles the birthplace of the Sun
Astronomers used a new method of detecting solar brothers and sisters. We are talking about thousands of stars that appeared in the same massive cluster as the sun, about 4.6 billion years ago. Over time, the stars in the cluster moved away and spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy, which significantly complicates the search process.
Scientists believe that it is important to find sun relatives, because it will allow a better study of the conditions under which the sun appeared. A sample of 230,000 spectra was obtained using the AMBRE project - galactic archeology. It helps determine the parameters of the stellar atmosphere for archived spectra using the FEROS, HARPS, UVES and GIRAFFE spectrographs from the European Southern Observatory.
After that, the researchers used qualitative spectral data along with accurate astrometric information from the second edition of the ESA Gaia mission. Thus, it was possible to perform a search for stars with a chemical composition that best suits the sun. In this work, it turned out to find only one solar twin - HD186302, but it is considered special. This is the star of the main sequence G3, which converges with the Sun not only in age and chemical composition, but also copies the appearance.
In addition, sunny brothers and sisters are able to become excellent candidates for the search for life. There is a possibility that life was transferred between the planets around the stars in the cluster. Scientists report that the likelihood of such a scenario is real, especially if we are talking about a period of late heavy bombardment. It is possible that a rocky planet similar to the Earth (Earth 2.0) lives near the solar twin. A team of scientists is planning to start searching for planets around the HD186302 star using HARPS and ESPRESSO spectrographs.
