HE0107-5240
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Template:Astrobox begin2 Template:Star listings Template:Astrobox end HE0107-5240 is a newly discovered giant star roughly 36,000 light years away from Earth.
It is largely metal-free, having just 1/200,000 of the metal that the Sun has. It is one of the oldest stars yet found and is thought to be 14 billion years old. This would make its formation comtemporaneous 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 is relatively small for a star of the early universe, which accounts for its old age: truly giant stars die quickly. To help explain why this star is so small, it is hypothesized it was once part of a binary star system.
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.