Astronomers from Leuven (Belgium) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) have discovered that massive stars in the star-forming region M17 (the Omega Nebula) are—against expectations—not part of a close binary. They have started their lives alone or with a distant partner star. The researchers base their findings on data from the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. The study will be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.