potw1603 òÀÔ Foto van de Week
ESO Telescopes Spy a Rare Relic
18 januari 2016: The Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars. However, the star at the centre of this image still manages to be very unusual òÀÔ no mean feat! A BrazilianòÀÓAmerican team led by Jorge Melendez, from the University of S†ão Paulo used two of ESOòÀÙs telescopes in Chile to discover that this star, named 2MASS J18082002òÀÓ5104378, is a rare relic from the Milky WayòÀÙs formative years. As such, it offers astronomers a precious opportunity to explore the first stars that sprung to life within our galaxy. 2MASS J18082002òÀÓ5104378 was spotted in 2014 by ESOòÀÙs New Technology Telescope (NTT). Follow-up observations using ESOòÀÙs Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered that, unlike younger stars such as the Sun, this star shows an unusually low abundance of what astronomers curiously call metals òÀÔ elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In fact, it is so devoid of these elements that it is known as an ...