Hunt For Sun's Siblings From Stellar Nursery Torn Apart By Milky Way

In the largest survey of its kind so far, researchers have looked at the "DNA" of over 340,000 stars in our home galaxy, to identify the stars with the same chemical composition as the sun. Stars with the same chemistry originated in the same star clusters, and the survey would help astronomers find siblings of the sun before the Milky Way tore apart the stellar nursery where they all formed. The research is led by astronomers from Australia, supported by colleagues from Europe, and is called the Galactic Archaeology survey, or GALAH. It "is a large-scale stellar spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way and designed to deliver chemical information" about a large number of stars. The announcement Tuesday about 342,682 stars was the first major public release of data by GALAH, which will eventually look at over one million stars.