Question about Westerlund 1

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grayfox

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I know the cluster itself is about 6 light years across, but how far apart are the stars inside it?
 
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thalion

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The original press release gives some idea of how close the stars apart in the center, if we conclude that there are many more unseen faint stars than supergiants and hypergiants.<br /><br />http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2005/pr-08-05.html<br /><br />A sphere with a diameter of 6 light-years would have a volume of 113 cubic light-years; a sphere that size in the solar neighborhood would only have two or three stars. If there are really are 500,000 stars in that small space, then that's 4424 stars per cubic light-year. All the stars would be very, very close; I'm guessing few would be more than 500-1000 AUs from each other.
 
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