MCELS / Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory / University of Michigan
The Great Cloud of Magalhães, A Satellite Galaxy of the Milky Way, where the almost untouched star SDSS J0715-7334 was spotted
A star found in the great cloud of Magalhães is the purest object ever found in the universe. It is remarkably not polluted by heavier elements, suggesting that it descends from the older stars in the universe.
A SDSS J0715-7334a relatively close star that seems to lack almost entirely from any heavy elements produced by supernoves, can be a direct descendant of the first stars who formed in the universe.
As explained by, astronomers theorize that the first stars were made up of hydrogen and helium that floated after the Big Bang. Only when these stars ran out of fuel and exploded in a supernova that the heavier elements than Helium were scattered. The remaining, rich in element gas, from these initial explosions, then formed the next generation of stars, repeating the cycle until eventually produces all the elements we see today in the stars and on planets.
Most of the stars we see in our galaxy are many generations removed from this initial population of stars, but some astronomers have found almost pristine stars. They are thought to be “Second Generation Stars”born of the remains of the oldest stars.
SDSS J0715-7334-The purest object of the universe
Now, a team from the University of Chicago has found a star that has the smaller total amount of “metals” – which, for astronomers, means all elements other than hydrogen or helium – in the known universe.
The star, called SDSS J0715-7334 and revealed in a study last week in the arXiv It is located in the large cloud of Magalhães, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and has a metal content of about 0.8 parts per million, which is approximately 20,000 times less than our sun.
It was found that the star contains Extremely low iron quantitiescomparable to the views in other stars almost Pristin. However, they also found that it has Extremely low carbon quantitiesat levels that we do not see in Milky Way stars.
“What is particularly interesting is that most stars [quase] Pristinas we know has a lot of carbon, while not, ”he said in a comment to New Scientist, Anke Ardern Arentsenfrom the University of Cambridge, which was not part of the investigation.
“This may suggest that if formed in a very different wayand the almost pristine stars we see on the Milky Way, ”he said, in turn, Anna Frebelfrom the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the same magazine.
