The formation of blue stragglers
Date: 09 September 2019
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Copyright: NASA/ESA
This illustration demonstrates the two ways that blue stragglers in star clusters form.
The illustration on the left shows the collision model where two low-mass stars in an overcrowded environment experience a head-on collision, combining their fuel and mass to form a single hot star.
The illustration on the right depicts the "vampire" model consisting of a pair of stars that undergo a transformation, with the lower-mass star draining its larger-mass companion of the hydrogen that fuels its rebirth.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 
Last Update: 11 September 2019
