Astronomers detect a bright-blue bridge of stars, and it's about to blow

In one galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, the sun orbits the Milky Way. — The Milky Way galaxy.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Astrophysicists have found a new region of the Milky Way, and it's filled with searingly hot, bright-blue stars that are about to explode.

The researchers were creating the most detailed map yet of the star-flecked spiral arms of our galactic neighborhood with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia telescope when they discovered the region, which they have named the Cepheus spur, they reported in a new study.

Astronomers call these giant, blue stars OB stars because they are among the hottest in the stellar classification system. Stars of this type are the rarest, hottest, shortest-living and largest stars in the entire galaxy. The violent nuclear reactions taking place inside their hearts make them six times hotter than the sun. And the enormous stellar explosions that end their lives — called supernovas — scatter the heavy elements essential for complex life far into the galaxy.

"OB stars are rare, in a Galaxy of 400 billion stars there might be less than 200,000," study co-author Michelangelo Pantaleoni González, a researcher at the Spanish Astrobiology Center (CAB), told Live Science. "And as they're responsible for the creation of a lot of the heavy elements, they can really be seen as the chemical enrichers of the galaxy. It's because of stars like these, dead long ago, that the geochemistry of our planet was complex enough for biochemistry to arise." Wherever we find blue stars, we find the most active and most "alive" regions of the galaxy, according to the researchers.

The researchers compiled their star map by triangulating the stars' distances to Earth using a technique called stellar parallax. By comparing the apparent positions of the stars, observed from different perspectives during Earth's orbit around the sun, astronomers can calculate the distances to the stars themselves. Using this technique, along with data from the ESA's Gaia telescope, the team mapped out stars at distances beyond any of those charted before and in areas of space previously thought to be empty.

Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.