🌐 Students Discover One of the Oldest Stars in the Universe

Astronomy students from the University of Chicago observed 77 stars they had selected for study during a field trip at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

On their very first night, they made a discovery: they found an unusually "pristine" star—SDSS J0715−7334. Its metal content (astronomers refer to all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium as metals) turned out to be extremely low: only about 0.005% of the level typical for the Sun. This chemical composition suggests that it is one of the oldest stars ever discovered.

It likely formed shortly after the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago, when heavy elements were still virtually nonexistent in the universe.

⏫ The students also calculated its trajectory. It turned out that the star formed in the Large Magellanic Cloud and migrated into the Milky Way billions of years ago. 

"This ancient immigrant gives us an unprecedented look at conditions in the early universe," confirms their instructor, Professor Alex Ji.

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