The Sun may have formed in a rich star cluster such as the Eagle Nebula (Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage/STScI/AURA) The Sun’s orbit through the Milky Way over the last 4.6 billion years is shown as a dotted line that curves around at various distances from the galactic centre in this simulated view from above the galaxy. In a new simulation of 1000 stars that were born in the same cluster as the Sun, Simon Portegies Zwart finds that they should lie along the Sun’s trajectory, in leading and trailing orbits (dark bullets). Ten to 60 of the stars may lie within about 300 light years of the …