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The cluster, designated IRS13, was first identified over two decades ago, but had been difficult to assess how old its stellar components are. Using data collected by a wide range of telescopes over many years, we finally found the stars in IRS13 to be much younger than expected. The stars in IRS13 appeared to be around 100,000 years old, which is extremely young in cosmic terms. For instance, our “middle-aged” star is around 4.6 billion years old, meaning the sun is 46,000 times older than the stars of IRS13.
