Weird stellar remnant may be from one of the first stars in the universe
By Harry Baker 1 day ago
An artist's impression of a red giant star undergoing a hypernova explosion. (Image credit: Shutterstock)
Astronomers have detected an extremely unusual star that they believe is a stellar fossil, or remnant, of one of the universe's very first stars.
The star, named AS0039, is located in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy around 290,000 light-years from the solar system. This stellar remnant has the lowest concentration of metal, particularly iron, of any star measured outside the Milky Way. The researchers think that finding is evidence that the remnant is a direct descendent of one of the universe's earliest stars, which contained very little metal.
The team found that the primordial parent star of AS0039 would have been around 20 solar masses and likely died in a hypernova — a stellar explosion 10 to 100 times more powerful than a regular supernova.
The discovery may reveal new information about the universe's first stars, which have never been directly or indirectly observed until now. "AS0039 has such an unusual chemical composition that it enables us to probe the nature of the first stars and, in particular, their stellar mass," study co-author Mike Irwin, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in England, told Live Science.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/evidence-of-first-stars-in-universe
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