Astronomers have identified what they believe to be the purest and most pristine object in the universe — a giant red star known as SDSS J0715-7334, located approximately 79,256 light-years from the Sun. The discovery, led by Alexander Ji of the University of Chicago, provides an extraordinary window into the first generation of stars formed shortly after the Big Bang.
A Giant Red Star Frozen in Time
Described in a new preprint paper titled “A nearly pristine star from the Large Magellanic Cloud”, the star is believed to have remained chemically untouched since the early universe, offering rare insight into the conditions that birthed the cosmos.
“This star has the most pristine composition of any object known in the universe,” Ji and his team wrote. “It represents a direct descendant of the first generation of stars.”
For additional details, see the ScienceAlert report.
Born in Another Galaxy, Living Now in the Milky Way
SDSS J0715-7334 is not originally from our galaxy. It formed in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) — a dwarf galaxy about 163,000 light-years from the Milky Way — before migrating into our galaxy’s outer halo. The team referred to it as a “galactic immigrant.”
