Astronomers have announced the discovery of a new galactic star cluster called Barbá 2, located about 24,000 light-years from Earth. The cluster contains at least several supergiant stars.

The Barbá 2 star cluster was first discovered in 2013, when Chilean astronomer Rodolfo Barbá, who explored the plane of the Milky Way, discovered a group of gravitationally bound stars with a common origin, located between the globular cluster NGC 3603 and the Chios region.

However, Barba died in 2021 before he could publish a paper on the new star cluster. Three years later, a team of Spanish researchers continued their work and presented the results of the analysis, supported by data from the Gaia observatory.

Astronomers estimated the radius of Barbá 2’s core to be 2.74 light-years and identified 201 likely members of the cluster clustered near its core. They also discovered seven supergiants in the cluster: five red, one blue, and one yellow.