Mind the gap: filling in the missing pieces for star clusters

My colleagues and I have confirmed the existence of a new type of star cluster---as published recently in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But what are star clusters, and why do they matter? When you look up at the night sky you see individual stars belonging to our galaxy, the Milky Way. But you may also see satellites of the Milky Way. The most famous of these are the clouds of Magellan, named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Under good conditions, you might also see a compact cluster of stars---a globular cluster. Globular clusters are dense, spherical collections of stars that orbit around the Milky Way like moths around a light bulb. They are over 10 billion years old and thought to have formed just after the Big Bang. In this sense they are the fossils of the astronomical world providing clues to the early universe and the process of galaxy formation.