In rare snap, astronomers capture one of the oldest known stars in the universe
By Ben Turner
Published on March 22, 2026.
Astronomers have captured one of the oldest known stars in the universe, PicII-503, located 150,000 light-years from Earth in the Pictor constellation. The image was taken by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted atop the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. The star, which formed when the cosmos was young, is classified as a Population II, or second-generation, star and has only 1-40,000th of the iron contained within our much younger sun. However, it makes up for its carbon-to-iron ratio, which is over 1,500 times the ratio in the sun. This could explain why carbon ends up everywhere in the cosmos, making it an extremely suitable element to act as the primary element for life.
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