Speeding star gives new clues to breakup of multi-star system

A remarkable new discovery using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals three stars that now hold the record as the youngest-known examples of a super-fast-flying breed. “Until these observations, only a few—but older—examples of such rapidly-moving stars had been found with origins traceable back to the volatile systems that likely ejected them,” said lead researcher Kevin Luhman of Penn State University. “The new Hubble observations provide very strong evidence that these three stars were ejected from an unstable multi-star system.” The new discovery is published in this month’s Astrophysical Journal Letters.