No close partner for young, massive stars in Omega Nebula
(PHYSorg.com Space & Earth)

Astronomers from Leuven (Belgium) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) have discovered that massive stars in the star-forming region M17 (the Omega Nebula) are-against expectations-not part of a close binary. They have started their lives alone or with a distant partner star. The researchers base their findings on data from the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO`s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. The study will be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.