Within the Milky Way, where are open clusters heavily concentrated geographically?
Answer
In the plane of the galactic disk.
Open clusters are intrinsically linked to active star formation, meaning their location mirrors where gas and dust are plentiful. In the Milky Way, this activity is concentrated along the spiral arms, which reside primarily within the thin plane of the galactic disk. The text specifies that their distribution is tightly confined, showing a very small scale height of only about 180 light-years perpendicular to this plane, highlighting their strong localization to the disk environment where ongoing processes create new stellar populations.
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