'At the edge of what we thought possible': Astronomers find extremely rare star from ancient universe
By Robert Lea
Published on March 18, 2026.
Astronomers have discovered a rare, iron-deficient second-generation star, PicII-503, in the dwarf Pictor II, located around 150,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pictor. The star has only 1/40,000th of the iron contained within the sun, making it one of the most primordial stars ever discovered. This discovery provides evidence of how the first generation of stars died to chemically enrich their successors. The discovery was made using the (DECam) mounted atop Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope. The team also found a massive overabundance of carbon, with its ratio over 1,500 times greater than the same ratio in the sun. The first confirmed example of a POP II star found in a faint dwarf galaxy was highlighted as an extremely metal-poor star in data collected by DECam's MAGIC survey.
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