If you closely followed the night sky in recent days, you might have noticed an incredibly bright star near the constellation of Orion. This Sirius is a bright star that can be observed from almost all terrestrial points (except the most northern regions). This is a binary system and one of the closest to the Sun. Distant for 8 light years.
This star has been known for a long time, since it was used in agriculture in ancient Egypt. Its rise in the sky annually marked the flood of the Nile. In ancient myths, the star displayed the Big Dog's Eye.
Stars with such brightness delight the eyes of ordinary people and strain scientists. The fact is that their glow eclipses other celestial sources located in the same celestial region. Therefore, in this picture Sirius had to disguise. As soon as the glow of Sirius was “muffled”, an interesting object was seen on the left side - the star cluster Gaia 1, found in 2017.
Gaia 1 is an open star cluster distant 15,000 light years away. Because of the random alignment with the star, he could not find the last 4 centuries. But the Gaia system managed to cope with the task.
Gaia 1 is also one of two previously unknown star clusters that were noticed when counting stars from the first data set of the Gaia mission, released in September 2016. Now scientists are waiting for the second issue, scheduled for April 25.
