HE0107-5240

HE0107-5240 is a newly discovered giant star roughly 36,000 light years away from Earth.

It is largely metal-free, having just 1/200,000th the metal that the Sun does. It is one of the oldest stars yet found and is thought to be 14 billion years old. This would make its formation comtemporarious with the Big Bang and would thus mean it was one of the first generation of stars, who converted the hydrogen, helium and lithium of the Big Bang into heavier elements, like carbon or oxygen.

The star was found by Norbert Christlieb and colleagues, at the University of Hamburg in Germany. It was discovered by the Siding Spring Observatory 2.3m telescope, and follow-on observations were made at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, using one of the units of the Very Large Telescope.