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Study inspects population of variable stars in the cluster NGC 7006
Identification charts of variable stars in NGC 7006. Credit: Ferro et al., 2022.

Astronomers have observed a cluster of stars using the IAO in India. The results of the study were presented on the arXiv pre-print server.

The GCs are collections of stars. They are thought to be natural laboratories that can be used to study the evolution of stars and galaxies. It is thought that the origin of GCs is related to periods of intense star formation in early-type galaxies.

There is a GC located 137,000 light years away in the constellation Delphinus. There are at least 76 variable stars in NGC 7006 and 64 of them were identified by the previous observations.

In order to shed more light on the population of variable stars, a team of astronomer led by Armando Arellano Ferro of the National Autonomous University of Mexico performed photometric observations of the variable stars.

The observations were made with a 2 m telescope. The researchers wrote in the paper that the field of view for the detector was about 10 10 10.

The team was able to identify hundreds of stars. They searched for new variables in the sample. There were 10 new variables that were detected and received, including two stars of the RRc type, two stars of the RRab type, and one star of the BL Hercules type.

The average period of the stars in this cluster was calculated to be just over a week and the fraction of stars in this cluster was less than a tenth of a percent. According to the astronomer, the values show that NGC 7006 is a type of Oui.

According to the study, the weighted mean radius and mass of all the known RRab variables are 5.61 and 0.67 respectively. The values for the stars were measured to be 4.27 and 0.55. According to the researchers, the main sequence predecessor of the stars in the red giant branch events had a mass of between 0.82 and 0.85 solar mass.

The scientists were able to get some fundamental parameters from the collected data. The cluster is 134,200 light years away from the Earth and has a metallicity of - 1.53 and a reddening of 0.08.

There is a detailed analysis of the variable star population in the globular cluster. There is a link to this page.

Journal information: arXiv

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