Astronomers Have Found a Record-Breaking Star That’s Nearly as Old as The Universe
Another ancient star has been found lurking in the Milky Way. Around 35,000 light-years away, a red giant star named SMSS J160540.18–144323.1 was found to have the lowest iron levels of any star yet analysed in the galaxy.
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Tau.Neutrino said:
Astronomers Have Found a Record-Breaking Star That’s Nearly as Old as The UniverseAnother ancient star has been found lurking in the Milky Way. Around 35,000 light-years away, a red giant star named SMSS J160540.18–144323.1 was found to have the lowest iron levels of any star yet analysed in the galaxy.
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Seems a boring topic but not so.
“The first stars were made up primarily of hydrogen and helium, and were thought to be very massive, very hot, and very short-lived. These stars are called Population III, and we’ve never seen them.”
“the Sun is around 100,000 generations from the Big Bang”.
“the previous record-holder for the lowest iron content of = −4.07 ± 0.07 – around 11,750 times less metallic than the Sun. But SMSS J160540.18–144323.1 is at = −6.2 ± 0.2. As Nordlander said, that’s around 1.5 million times less metallic.”
“It was likely one of the eecond generation of stars. And it’s dying. It’s a red giant, which means the star is near the end of its lifespan, using up the last of its hydrogen before it switches to helium fusion.”
What’s SMSS? It’s “skymapper”. It’s a specially-built, 1.3-meter telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey is producing a high-fidelity digital record of the entire southern sky for Australia.
Latest Data Release
DR2
Feb 27, 2019
21,000 deg2
505,176,667 objects
121,494 exposures
4.7 billion detections