Terzan 5 Survives as a Stripped Core, Still Forming Stars After Billions of Years

Webb and Hubble combined observations reveal that Terzan 5, a dense stellar system in the Milky Way's bulge, is a stripped remnant of a far larger progenitor that survived tidal disruption. Rather than dissolving, its gravitationally bound core retained enough gas to sustain four separate generations of star formation across cosmic time. The finding, published 16 June 2026, establishes Terzan 5 as the prototype of a new stellar object class: the bulge fossil fragment.