Many “open” star clusters arch high overhead on summer nights. They’re lined up along the glowing band of the Milky Way – the outline of our home galaxy. Each cluster is a family of stars – from a few dozen to a thousand or more. But open clusters don’t stay together for long. Their stars eventually spread out, so the cluster disappears.

Some families begin to spread out early – before many of their stars are even fully formed. One recently discovered example is called Ophion. It consists of more than a thousand stars.

Astronomers found the group by analyzing data from Gaia, a space telescope. They looked through observations of more than 200 million stars. Then they narrowed their search to stars that are cooler than the Sun, and no more than 20 million years old. And Ophion just popped out.

The stars form a giant clump that’s centered about 650 light-years away. But all of its members are going their own way. So they don’t form an obvious “cluster” – a tight grouping that’s easy to pick out.

Ophion is on the edge of a region that’s given birth to many thousands of stars. Exploding stars in that region – or within Ophion itself – might have scattered the stars like bowling pins, keeping the family from sticking together.

Ophion is near the middle of Ophiuchus, which is well up in the south-southwest at nightfall. You can see many clusters there – but not a hint of the ill-fated Ophion.

Script by Damond Benningfield