During his maiden voyage to space, “Star Trek” icon William Shatner had an awe-inspiring experience — but it wasn’t necessarily positive.

“So, I went to space,” reads a Variety-published excerpt from Shatner’s new book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder.”

After describing the exhilarating launch procedure and beginning of his zero-gravity excursion, Shatner wrote that when he turned around to look into the void of space, he was shocked by the emptiness he found.

But this is only one half of the story, as metal-poor stars within the Milky Way may also have come from smaller dwarf galaxies that smashed into and merged with our galaxy throughout its life. By examining these stars’ paths through space while retaining only those that didn’t veer out into the metal-poor regions of the galaxy, the researchers were able to separate out the stars that form the ancient heart from the stars that originated in a dwarf galaxy.

This left researchers with some of the original skeleton of stars around which the Milky Way grew — a population they estimate to be between 50 million to 200 million times as massive as our own sun. As heavier stars die faster than smaller ones, the remaining stars are on average around 1.5 times lighter than the sun, according to the researchers.

“These stars make up about half of the total stellar mass once born,” Rix said. “So, about half of the stars [from the protogalaxy] survive to date.”

ABC News’ photo editors have assembled a collection of some of the most stunning images taken of outer space. A photo of aurora australis or the southern lights taken aboard the International Space Station, June 13, 2019.

Red dwarf stars may be the key.

Until now, models of planetary formation pointed to most planets forming with either too much or too little water. This was especially prominent around the most common type of stars in the galaxy – red dwarves.