Star Families: Open Clusters

Students learn that open clusters are families of stars born together from one cloud that slowly drift apart, and that because cluster stars share an age, distance, and makeup, astronomers use them as natural experiments to learn how stars age.

Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops8 stops

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What students will see and do

Students fly to the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, the Hyades, the Beehive (M44), the Double Cluster, the Wild Duck Cluster (M11), the Sun, and a final view of the Milky Way. Aetherion pauses three times: at the Pleiades (using blue stars to estimate a cluster's age), at the Double Cluster (predicting star colors in young and old clusters), and at the Sun (searching for the Sun's lost siblings).

Learning objectives

• Describe how open clusters form from clouds of gas and dust and why they drift apart over time.
• Explain why the brightest remaining stars in a cluster reveal its age.
• Compare the ages and star colors of young clusters such as the Double Cluster with older clusters such as the Hyades.
• Identify why clusters make good natural experiments for studying how stars change.

NGSS connections

Stops on this journey

1. A Nursery Full of Newborns
2. The Seven Sisters (discussion stop)
3. The Nearest Family
4. The Beehive
5. Two Families Side by Side (discussion stop)
6. The Wild Duck Cluster
7. The Sun's Lost Siblings (discussion stop)
8. Clocks Across the Galaxy

Vocabulary

• open cluster
• nebula
• light-year
• star cluster age
• red supergiant
• moving group
• spectrum