An international squad of astronomers has discovered that there are large quantities of atomic number 8 in the atmosphere of one of the oldest love stars , a fact that inform us about what kind of fabric this special object shape from .
The observations of “ archaic star ” J0815 + 4729 are report inThe Astrophysical Journal . The number of element these stars possess is a windowpane into the past . The first wizard that ever formed in the population were made only of hydrogen and He . Once they hold up supernova , they enriched surrounding hydrogen with heavier element such as carbon and oxygen , and from those atomic number 1 cloud , new stars formed .
J0815 + 4729 is among those second contemporaries of stars . We are yet to see wizard from the first universe , but from studying this object and the heavy elements present in it , we can gain important insights into what come in before . The squad believes that the pre - stellar swarm of J0815 + 4729 was enriched by a supernova between 21 and 27 times the mass of the Sun .
J0815 + 4729 is situate in the galactic halo , the global neighborhood around the Milky Way ’s tenuous disk , where the Sun and the stars make up the coiling blazonry . It is located 5,000 light - years towards the constellation Lynx .
“ The crude physical composition of the star indicates that it was formed during the first hundreds of million of years after the Big Bang , possibly from the material expelled from the first supernova of the Milky Way , ” lead writer Dr Jonay González Hernández from the Instituto de Astrofısica de Canarias , said in astatement .
The observation were potential thanks to the W. M. Keck Observatory and took more than five hours over a exclusive nighttime . This allow for them to mensurate how abundant 16 chemical substance elements are in the virtuoso ’s atmosphere . They found that atomic number 6 , nitrogen , and oxygen were about 10 , 8 , and 3 percentage respectively of that measured in the Sun . By compare , heavy constituent like calcium and Fe in the star are approximately one - one-millionth that of the Sun ’s .
“ This result is very exciting , ” said Keck Observatory Chief Scientist John O’Meara . “ It tells us about some of the earliest meter in the universe by using wizard in our cosmic back yard . I look ahead to seeing more measurements like this one so we can better sympathise the early seeding of oxygen and other constituent throughout the young world . ”