Ancient stars shed light on the prehistory of the Milky Way
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 10:30
in Astronomy & Space
a kind of stellar fossils in the outer reaches of our galaxy, contain abnormally large amounts of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium. Where these large amounts came from has been a mystery for researchers, since they are usually seen in much later generations of stars. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have been studying these ancient stars for several years with ESO's giant telescopes in Chile in order to trace the origin of these heavy elements and with recent observations they have concluded how they could have been formed in the early history of the Milky Way. The results are published in prestigious Astrophysical Journal Letters.