A search for the first stars that winked into existence at the dawn of the Universe has yielded one of the oldest stars we've found yet, right next door to our own galaxy.
Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope observed one of the closest globulars to Earth – NGC 6397 and were surprised to find signs of multiple stellar-mass black holes.
Astronomers have detected large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of the oldest and most elementally depleted stars known. This finding provides an important clue on how oxygen was produced in the first generations of stars.
The discovery of this approximately 13.5 billion-year-old tiny star means more stars with very low mass and very low metal content are likely out there—perhaps even some of the universe's very first stars.
