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Indian Astronomers have developed a new method based on Machine Learning that can identify cluster stars-- assembly of stars physically related through common origin, with much greater certainty.

Highlights

• The method can be used on clusters of all ages, distances, and densities.
• The method has been used to identify hundreds of additional stars for six different clusters up to 18000 light-years away and uncover peculiar stars.
• All stars in a star cluster have approximately the same age and chemistry, so any differences seen can be attributed to the peculiarities in individual stars with certainty. 
• A team of Astronomers from Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India used European Space Agency (ESA)’s recently released Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) which gives very accurate information about the brightness, parallax, and proper motion of more than a billion stars.
• IIA team used the catalogue of members to identify the hottest stars in the six clusters using ultraviolet images from Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on the Indian space observatory ‘AstroSat’. 
• Their work has already resulted in discovering hot subdwarf-B type stars (compact stars that are very rare) in open cluster King 2.

Source: PIB