Astronomers have uncovered a huge haul of hidden stars, including some violently erupting newborn protostars as well as others that fall under an unexpected new category of ancient giant red stars. They dub the latter bodies "old smokers."
These old smokers lurk at the heart of the Milky Way, the team says, sitting quietly for decades and fading away until they eventually puff out vast clouds of smoke. The stars were discovered through a 10-year survey of the sky conducted with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA), located high in the Chilean Andes at the Cerro Paranal Observatory. This effort managed to track almost 1 billion stars.
