Even stars can be a little loose

Astronomers are used to seeing star clusters orbiting other galaxies. Up to now, they've always been dense little globes filled with millions of suns.

The Andromeda galaxy is one of the Milky Way’s nearest galactic neighbors.

Astronomers recently found star clusters of a type never seen before orbiting Andromeda.

More familiar to scientists are globular clusters. These collections of stars are densely packed.

The newly discovered clusters are much larger and less dense than globular clusters.

These “extended clusters” are not found in the Milky Way. Why not is still unknown.

Mankind may never know it all, but we continue to learn.