The discovery has implications for how we understand the role of these stars in the Universe.

An international team of astronomers, including FONDECYT postdoctoral researcher from the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of La Serena, Dr. Carolina Sabín San Julián, has studied the stellar content of 30 Doradus, a huge star-forming region Also known as the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a galaxy located in the vicinity of the Milky Way and visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere), discovering a greater number of massive stars than expected.

In the study published in the journal Science, the physical properties of approximately 250 stars with masses greater than 15 times the mass of our Sun (massive stars) have been characterized through the use of stellar atmosphere models and evolutionary models, in order to determine the mass distribution of stars born in 30 Doradus.

Dr. Carolina Sabín, co-author of the article and researcher at the ULS Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained that the study was surprised by the number of stars with 200 to 300 solar masses in this region, being some of the most massive stars ever observed.

“This has enormous importance in the way we understand the role of massive stars in the Cosmos, since “a greater number of these objects implies a greater number of supernovae, neutron stars and black holes, increasing the probabilities of seeing events that allow detecting gravitational waves and influencing the evolution of the host galaxy. “This finding could change our view of what the early stages of the Universe were like, since the intense radiation emitted by massive stars played a crucial role in its evolution,” he noted.

The contribution of the Spanish professional in said paper has been the detailed analysis of a sample of approximately 100 massive stars through the use of stellar atmosphere models, the results of which were published in May 2017 (2017A&A...601A..79S) .

Dr. Sabín also indicated that Science is, along with Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, presenting outstanding discoveries from all areas of science, and that “the publication of this article continues to confirm the development of science at the University of La Serena, providing great visibility and impetus to the research work being carried out in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.”

The paper, titled "An excess of massive stars in the local 30 Doradus starburst" (by FRN Schneider et al.), is available at: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/69.

Other articles

The participation of the ULS researcher in this study is added to that of the institution's Master's in Astronomy student and hourly professor of the Department. of Physics and Astronomy, Natalia Ulloa, who has been part of the publication of 3 other works in the journal Science, all related to the event of the detection of the optical counterpart of the gravitational wave (http://bit.ly/2iejV14).

These are “Swope Supernova Survey 2017a (SSS17a), the optical counterpart to a gravitational wave source”, “Electromagnetic evidence that SSS17a is the result of a binary neutron star merger” and “Light curves of the neutron star merger GW170817/SSS17a: Implications for r-process nucleosynthesis”. The ULS Master's in Astronomy student, Abdo Campillay, also participates in the latter.