{"id":234599,"date":"2026-04-04T02:50:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/the-most-pristine-star-yet-found-in-the-known-universe"},"modified":"2026-04-04T02:50:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T07:50:29","slug":"the-most-pristine-star-yet-found-in-the-known-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/the-most-pristine-star-yet-found-in-the-known-universe","title":{"rendered":"The most pristine star yet found in the known universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-most-pristine-star-yet-found-in-the-known-universe2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An unusual team of astronomers used Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) data and observations on the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science\u2019s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to discover the most pristine star in the known universe, called SDSS J0715-7334. Their work is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41550-026-02816-7\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Astronomy.<\/p>\n<p>Led by the University of Chicago\u2019s Alexander Ji\u2014a former Carnegie Observatories postdoctoral fellow\u2014and including Carnegie astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier\u2014who leads SDSS, now in its fifth generation\u2014the research team identified a star from just the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-03-scientists-ancient-stars-galaxy.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">second generation<\/a> of celestial objects in the cosmos, which formed just a few billion years after the universe began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese pristine stars are windows into the dawn of stars and galaxies in the universe,\u201d Ji explained. Several of his and Kollmeier\u2019s co-authors on the paper are undergraduate students from UChicago, whom Ji brought to Las Campanas on an observing trip for spring break last year. \u201cMy first visit to LCO is where I really fell in love with astronomy, and it was special to share such a formative experience with my students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An unusual team of astronomers used Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) data and observations on the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science\u2019s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to discover the most pristine star in the known universe, called SDSS J0715-7334. Their work is published in Nature Astronomy. Led by the University of Chicago\u2019s Alexander Ji\u2014a former [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}