Astronomers find one of the first stars formed in the Milky Way

Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have identified a star that is a key to the formation of the first chemical elements in the galaxy. The results of this research are published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

The study presents the discovery of one of the stars with the lowest observed metal content. The star is 7,500 light years from the sun, in the halo of the Milky Way, and is along the line of sight to the Lynx constellation. The star is still on the main sequence. Its low mass, around 0.7 times the mass of the sun, although it has a surface temperature 400 degrees hotter.

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This movie shows the evolution of the stars in Leo IV, a dim dwarf galaxy in the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope measured the ages of these faint stars in Leo IV and two other similar galaxies, dubbed ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. The Hubble observations revealed that the stars in all three galaxies are more than 13 billion years old, almost as old as the 13.7-billion-year-old universe.