Astronomy:Stellar population

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Short description: Grouping of stars by similar metallicity
Artist's conception of the spiral structure of the Milky Way showing Baade's general population categories. The blue regions in the spiral arms are composed of the younger population I stars, while the yellow stars in the central bulge are the older population II stars. In reality, many population I stars are also found mixed in with the older population II stars.

In 1944, Walter Baade categorized groups of stars within the Milky Way into stellar populations. In the abstract of the article by Baade, he recognizes that Jan Oort originally conceived this type of classification in 1926.[1]

Baade observed that bluer stars were strongly associated with the spiral arms, and yellow stars dominated near the central galactic bulge and within globular star clusters.[2] Two main divisions were defined as population I and population II, with another newer, hypothetical division called population III added in 1978.

Among the population types, significant differences were found with their individual observed stellar spectra. These were later shown to be very important and were possibly related to star formation, observed kinematics,[3] stellar age, and even galaxy evolution in both spiral and elliptical galaxies. These three simple population classes usefully divided stars by their chemical composition or metallicity.[4][5][3]

By definition, each population group shows the trend where decreasing metal content indicates increasing age of stars. Hence, the first stars in the universe (very low metal content) were deemed population III, old stars (low metallicity) as population II, and recent stars (high metallicity) as population I.[6] The Sun is considered population I, a recent star with a relatively high 1.4% metallicity. Note that astrophysics nomenclature considers any element heavier than helium to be a "metal", including chemical non-metals such as oxygen.[7]

Stellar development

Observation of stellar spectra has revealed that stars older than the Sun have fewer heavy elements compared with the Sun.[3] This immediately suggests that metallicity has evolved through the generations of stars by the process of stellar nucleosynthesis.

Formation of the first stars

Under current cosmological models, all matter created in the Big Bang was mostly hydrogen (75%) and helium (25%), with only a very tiny fraction consisting of other light elements such as lithium and beryllium.[8] When the universe had cooled sufficiently, the first stars were born as population III stars, without any contaminating heavier metals. This is postulated to have affected their structure so that their stellar masses became hundreds of times more than that of the Sun. In turn, these massive stars also evolved very quickly, and their nucleosynthetic processes created the first 26 elements (up to iron in the periodic table).[9]

Many theoretical stellar models show that most high-mass population III stars rapidly exhausted their fuel and likely exploded in extremely energetic pair-instability supernovae. Those explosions would have thoroughly dispersed their material, ejecting metals into the interstellar medium (ISM), to be incorporated into the later generations of stars. Their destruction suggests that no galactic high-mass population III stars should be observable.[10] However, some population III stars might be seen in high-redshift galaxies whose light originated during the earlier history of the universe.[11] Scientists have found evidence of an extremely small ultra metal-poor star, slightly smaller than the Sun, found in a binary system of the spiral arms in the Milky Way. The discovery opens up the possibility of observing even older stars.[12]

Stars too massive to produce pair-instability supernovae would have likely collapsed into black holes through a process known as photodisintegration. Here some matter may have escaped during this process in the form of relativistic jets, and this could have distributed the first metals into the universe.[13][14][lower-alpha 1]

Formation of the observed stars

The oldest stars observed thus far,[10] known as population II, have very low metallicities;[16][6] as subsequent generations of stars were born, they became more metal-enriched, as the gaseous clouds from which they formed received the metal-rich dust manufactured by previous generations of stars from population III.

As those population II stars died, they returned metal-enriched material to the interstellar medium via planetary nebulae and supernovae, enriching further the nebulae, out of which the newer stars formed. These youngest stars, including the Sun, therefore have the highest metal content, and are known as population I stars.

Chemical classification by Baade

Population I stars

Population I star Rigel with reflection nebula IC 2118

Population I, or metal-rich, stars are young stars with the highest metallicity out of all three populations and are more commonly found in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy. The Sun is an example of a metal-rich star and is considered as an intermediate population I star, while the sun-like μ Arae is much richer in metals.[17]

Population I stars usually have regular elliptical orbits of the Galactic Center, with a low relative velocity. It was earlier hypothesized that the high metallicity of population I stars makes them more likely to possess planetary systems than the other two populations, because planets, particularly terrestrial planets, are thought to be formed by the accretion of metals.[18] However, observations of the Kepler Space Telescope data have found smaller planets around stars with a range of metallicities, while only larger, potential gas giant planets are concentrated around stars with relatively higher metallicity – a finding that has implications for theories of gas-giant formation.[19] Between the intermediate population I and the population II stars comes the intermediate disc population.

Population II stars

The Milky Way. Population II stars are in the galactic bulge and globular clusters.
Artist’s impression of a field of population III stars 100 million years after the Big Bang.

Population II, or metal-poor, stars are those with relatively little of the elements heavier than helium. These objects were formed during an earlier time of the universe. Intermediate population II stars are common in the bulge near the centre of the Milky Way, whereas population II stars found in the galactic halo are older and thus more metal-deficient. Globular clusters also contain high numbers of population II stars.[20]

A characteristic of population II stars is that despite their lower overall metallicity, they often have a higher ratio of "alpha elements" (elements produced by the alpha process, like oxygen and neon) relative to iron (Fe) as compared with population I stars; current theory suggests that this is the result of type II supernovas being more important contributors to the interstellar medium at the time of their formation, whereas type Ia supernova metal-enrichment came at a later stage in the universe's development.[21]

Scientists have targeted these oldest stars in several different surveys, including the HK objective-prism survey of Timothy C. Beers et al.[22] and the Hamburg-ESO survey of Norbert Christlieb et al.,[23] originally started for faint quasars. Thus far, they have uncovered and studied in detail about ten ultra-metal-poor (UMP) stars (such as Sneden's Star, Cayrel's Star, BD +17° 3248) and three of the oldest stars known to date: HE 0107-5240, HE 1327-2326 and HE 1523-0901. Caffau's star was identified as the most metal-poor star yet when it was found in 2012 using Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. However, in February 2014 the discovery of an even lower-metallicity star was announced, SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 located with the aid of SkyMapper astronomical survey data. Less extreme in their metal deficiency, but nearer and brighter and hence longer known, are HD 122563 (a red giant) and HD 140283 (a subgiant).

Population III stars

Possible glow of population III stars imaged by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

Population III stars[24] are a hypothetical population of extremely massive, luminous and hot stars with virtually no "metals", except possibly for intermixing ejecta from other nearby, early population III supernovae. The term was first introduced by Neville J. Woolf in 1965.[25][26] Such stars are likely to have existed in the very early universe (i.e., at high redshift) and may have started the production of chemical elements heavier than hydrogen, which are needed for the later formation of planets and life as we know it.[27][28]

The existence of population III stars is inferred from physical cosmology, but they have not yet been observed directly. Indirect evidence for their existence has been found in a gravitationally lensed galaxy in a very distant part of the universe.[29] Their existence may account for the fact that heavy elements – which could not have been created in the Big Bang – are observed in quasar emission spectra.[9] They are also thought to be components of faint blue galaxies. These stars likely triggered the universe's period of reionization, a major phase transition of the hydrogen gas composing most of the interstellar medium. Observations of the galaxy UDFy-38135539 suggest that it may have played a role in this reionization process. The European Southern Observatory discovered a bright pocket of early population stars in the very bright galaxy Cosmos Redshift 7 from the reionization period around 800 million years after the Big Bang, at z = 6.60. The rest of the galaxy has some later redder population II stars.[27][30] Some theories hold that there were two generations of population III stars.[31]

Artist's impression of the first stars, 400 million years after the Big Bang

Current theory is divided on whether the first stars were very massive or not. One possibility is that these stars were much larger than current stars: several hundred solar masses, and possibly up to 1,000 solar masses. Such stars would be very short-lived and last only 2–5 million years.[32] Such large stars may have been possible due to the lack of heavy elements and a much warmer interstellar medium from the Big Bang.[citation needed] Conversely, theories proposed in 2009 and 2011 suggest that the first star groups might have consisted of a massive star surrounded by several smaller stars.[33][34][35] The smaller stars, if they remained in the birth cluster, would accumulate more gas and could not survive to the present day, but a 2017 study concluded that if a star of 0.8 solar masses (M☉) or less was ejected from its birth cluster before it accumulated more mass, it could survive to the present day, possibly even in our Milky Way galaxy.[36]

Analysis of data of extremely low-metallicity population II stars such as HE 0107-5240, which are thought to contain the metals produced by population III stars, suggest that these metal-free stars had masses of 20~130 solar masses.[37] On the other hand, analysis of globular clusters associated with elliptical galaxies suggests pair-instability supernovae, which are typically associated with very massive stars, were responsible for their metallic composition.[38] This also explains why there have been no low-mass stars with zero metallicity observed, although models have been constructed for smaller population III stars.[39][40] Clusters containing zero-metallicity red dwarfs or brown dwarfs (possibly created by pair-instability supernovae[16]) have been proposed as dark matter candidates,[41][42] but searches for these types of MACHOs through gravitational microlensing have produced negative results.[citation needed]

Population II stars are considered seeds of black holes in the early universe but unlike high-mass black hole seeds like direct collapse black holes they would have produced light ones, if they could have grown to larger than expected masses then they could have been quasi-stars, other hypothetical seeds of heavy black holes which would have existed in the early development of the Universe before hydrogen and helium were contaminated by heavier elements.

Detection of population III stars is a goal of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.[43] New spectroscopic surveys, such as SEGUE or SDSS-II, may also locate population III stars.[citation needed]

On 8 December 2022, astronomers reported the possible detection of Population III stars.[44][45]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ It has been proposed that recent supernovae SN 2006gy and SN 2007bi may have been pair-instability supernovae where such super-massive population III stars exploded. Clark (2010) speculates that these stars could have formed relatively recently in dwarf galaxies, since they contain mainly primordial, metal-free interstellar matter. Past supernovae in these small galaxies could have ejected their metal-rich contents at speeds high enough for them to escape the galaxy, keeping the small galaxies' metal content very low.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "The resolution of Messier 32, NGC 205, and the central region of the Andromeda nebula". Astrophysical Journal 100: 137–146. 1944. doi:10.1086/144650. Bibcode: 1944ApJ...100..137B. "The two types of stellar populations had been recognized among the stars of our own galaxy by Oort as early as 1926.". 
  2. ↑ Hodge, Paul, ed (1977). Galaxies (3 ed.). Harvard University Press. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-0674340510. https://archive.org/details/galaxies00shap_0/page/62. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Gibson, B.K.; Fenner, Y.; Renda, A.; Kawata, D.; Hyun-chul, L. (2013). "Review: Galactic chemical evolution". Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (CSIRO publishing) 20 (4): 401–415. doi:10.1071/AS03052. Bibcode: 2003PASA...20..401G. http://astro.wsu.edu/hclee/pasa_review_GCE.pdf. Retrieved 17 April 2018. 
  4. ↑ Kunth, Daniel; Östlin, Göran (2000). "The most metal-poor galaxies". The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review 10 (1): 1–79. doi:10.1007/s001590000005. Bibcode: 2000A&ARv..10....1K. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Kunth/Kunth1.html. Retrieved 3 January 2022. 
  5. ↑ Schönrich, R.; Binney, J. (2009). "Origin and structure of the Galactic disc(s)". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 399 (3): 1145–1156. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15365.x. Bibcode: 2009MNRAS.399.1145S. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Bryant, Lauren J.. "What makes stars tick". Indiana University. http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v27n1/tick.shtml. 
  7. ↑ "Metals". https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/m/Metals. 
  8. ↑ Cyburt, Richard H.; Fields, Brian D.; Olive, Keith A.; Yeh, Tsung-Han (2016). "Big bang nucleosynthesis: Present status". Reviews of Modern Physics 88 (1): 015004. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.88.015004. Bibcode: 2016RvMP...88a5004C. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Heger, A.; Woosley, S.E. (2002). "The nucleosynthetic signature of Population III". Astrophysical Journal 567 (1): 532–543. doi:10.1086/338487. Bibcode: 2002ApJ...567..532H. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Schlaufman, Kevin C.; Thompson, Ian B.; Casey, Andrew R. (2018). "An ultra metal-poor star near the hydrogen-burning Limit". The Astrophysical Journal 867 (2): 98. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aadd97. Bibcode: 2018ApJ...867...98S. 
  11. ↑ Xu, Hao; Wise, John H.; Norman, Michael L. (29 July 2013). "Population III stars and remnants in high-redshift galaxies". The American Astronomical Society 773 (2): 83. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/83. Bibcode: 2013ApJ...773...83X. 
  12. ↑ "One of Milky Way's oldest stars discovered". 6 November 2018. http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/ultra-metal-poor-star-06577.html. 
  13. ↑ Fryer, C. L.; Woosley, S. E.; Heger, A. (2001). "Pair-instability supernovae, gravity waves, and gamma-ray transients". The Astrophysical Journal 550 (1): 372–382. doi:10.1086/319719. Bibcode: 2001ApJ...550..372F. 
  14. ↑ Heger, A.; Fryer, C. L.; Woosley, S. E.; Langer, N.; Hartmann, D. H. (2003). "How massive single stars end their life". The Astrophysical Journal 591 (1): 288–300. doi:10.1086/375341. Bibcode: 2003ApJ...591..288H. 
  15. ↑ Clark, Stuart (February 2010). "Primordial giant: The star that time forgot". New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527470.900-primordial-giant-the-star-that-time-forgot.html. Retrieved 1 February 2015. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Salvaterra, R.; Ferrara, A. (2004). "Induced formation of primordial low-mass stars". New Astronomy 10 (2): 113–120. doi:10.1016/j.newast.2004.06.003. Bibcode: 2004NewA...10..113S. 
  17. ↑ Soriano, M.S.; Vauclair, S. (2009). "New seismic analysis of the exoplanet-host star Mu Arae". Astronomy and Astrophysics 513: A49. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200911862. Bibcode: 2010A&A...513A..49S. 
  18. ↑ Lineweaver, Charles H. (2000). "An estimate of the age distribution of terrestrial planets in the universe: Quantifying metallicity as a selection effect". Icarus 151 (2): 307–313. doi:10.1006/icar.2001.6607. Bibcode: 2001Icar..151..307L. 
  19. ↑ Buchhave, L.A. (2012). "An abundance of small exoplanets around stars with a wide range of metallicities". Nature 486 (7403): 375–377. doi:10.1038/nature11121. PMID 22722196. Bibcode: 2012Natur.486..375B. 
  20. ↑ van Albada, T. S.; Baker, N. (1973). "On the two Oosterhoff groups of globular clusters". Astrophysical Journal 185: 477–498. doi:10.1086/152434. Bibcode: 1973ApJ...185..477V. 
  21. ↑ Wolfe, Arthur M.; Gawiser, Eric; Prochaska, Jason X. (2005). "Damped Ly‑α systems". Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 43 (1): 861–918. doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.42.053102.133950. Bibcode: 2005ARA&A..43..861W. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept05/Wolfe/Wolfe3.html. 
  22. ↑ Beers, T. C.; Preston, G. W.; Shectman, S. A. (1992). "A Search for Stars of Very Low Metal Abundance. II". Astronomical Journal 103: 1987. doi:10.1086/116207. Bibcode: 1992AJ....103.1987B. 
  23. ↑ Christlieb, N.; Wisotzki, L.; Reimers, D.; Gehren, T.; Reetz, J.; Beers, T. C. (1998). "An Automated Search for Metal-Poor Halo Stars in the Hamburg/ESO Objective-Prism Survey". ASP Conference Series 666. 
  24. ↑ Tominga, N. (2007). "Supernova nucleosynthesis in population III 13-50 Msolar stars and abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor stars". Astrophysical Journal 660 (5): 516–540. doi:10.1086/513063. Bibcode: 2007ApJ...660..516T. 
  25. ↑ Green, Louis (April 1966). "Observational Aspects of Cosmology". Sky and Telescope 31: 199. Bibcode: 1966S&T....31..199G. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1966S%26T....31..199G/abstract. 
  26. ↑ Thornton, Page (March 1966). "Observational Aspects of Cosmology". Science 151 (3716): 1411-1414,1416-1418. Bibcode: 1966Sci...151.1411P. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1966Sci...151.1411P/abstract. 
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Sobral, David; Matthee, Jorryt; Darvish, Behnam; Schaerer, Daniel; Mobasher, Bahram; Röttgering, Huub J.A.; Santos, Sérgio; Hemmati, Shoubaneh (4 June 2015). "Evidence for Pop III-like stellar populations in the most luminous Lyman-α emitters at the epoch of re-ionisation: Spectroscopic confirmation". The Astrophysical Journal 808 (2): 139. doi:10.1088/0004-637x/808/2/139. Bibcode: 2015ApJ...808..139S. 
  28. ↑ "Astronomers report finding earliest stars that enriched the cosmos". The New York Times. 17 June 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/science/space/astronomers-report-finding-earliest-stars-that-enriched-cosmos.html. 
  29. ↑ Fosbury, R.A.E. (2003). "Massive star formation in a gravitationally lensed H II galaxy at z = 3.357". Astrophysical Journal 596 (1): 797–809. doi:10.1086/378228. Bibcode: 2003ApJ...596..797F. 
  30. ↑ "Best observational evidence of first-generation stars in the universe". Astronomy Magazine. 17 June 2015. http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/06/the-very-large-telescope-discovers-brightest-distant-galaxy-and-signs-of-population-iii-stars. 
  31. ↑ Bromm, V.; Yoshida, N.; Hernquist, L.; McKee, C.F. (2009). "The formation of the first stars and galaxies". Nature 459 (7243): 49–54. doi:10.1038/nature07990. PMID 19424148. Bibcode: 2009Natur.459...49B. 
  32. ↑ Ohkubo, Takuya; Nomoto, Ken'ichi; Umeda, Hideyuki; Yoshida, Naoki; Tsuruta, Sachiko (2009-12-01). "Evolution of very massive Population III stars with mass accretion from pre-main sequence to collapse". The Astrophysical Journal 706 (2): 1184–1193. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/706/2/1184. ISSN 0004-637X. Bibcode: 2009ApJ...706.1184O. 
  33. ↑ Redd, Nola (February 2011). "The universe's first stars weren't loners after all". http://www.space.com/10801-stars-early-universe-loners.html. 
  34. ↑ Thompson, Andrea (January 2009). "How massive stars form: Simple solution found". http://www.space.com/6328-massive-stars-form-simple-solution.html. 
  35. ↑ Carr, Bernard J.. "Cosmology, Population III". California Institute of Technology. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Carr/carr.html. 
  36. ↑ Dutta, J.; Sur, S.; Stacy, A.; Bagla, J.S. (2020). "Modeling the Survival of Population III Stars to the Present Day". The Astrophysical Journal 901 (1): 16. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abadf8. Bibcode: 2020ApJ...901...16D. 
  37. ↑ Umeda, Hideyuki; Nomoto, Ken'Ichi (2003). "First-generation black-hole-forming supernovae and the metal abundance pattern of a very iron-poor star". Nature 422 (6934): 871–873. doi:10.1038/nature01571. PMID 12712199. Bibcode: 2003Natur.422..871U. 
  38. ↑ Puzia, Thomas H.; Kissler‐Patig, Markus; Goudfrooij, Paul (2006). "Extremely α‐enriched globular clusters in early‐type galaxies: A step toward the dawn of stellar populations?". The Astrophysical Journal 648 (1): 383–388. doi:10.1086/505679. Bibcode: 2006ApJ...648..383P. 
  39. ↑ Siess, Lionel; Livio, Mario; Lattanzio, John (2002). "Structure, evolution, and nucleosynthesis of primordial stars". The Astrophysical Journal 570 (1): 329–343. doi:10.1086/339733. Bibcode: 2002ApJ...570..329S. 
  40. ↑ Gibson, Carl H.; Nieuwenhuizen, Theo M.; Schild, Rudolph E. (2013). "Why are so many primitive stars observed in the Galaxy halo". Journal of Cosmology 22: 10163. Bibcode: 2013JCos...2210163G. 
  41. ↑ Kerins, E.J. (1997). "Zero-metallicity very low mass stars as halo dark matter". Astronomy and Astrophysics 322: 709. Bibcode: 1997A&A...322..709K. 
  42. ↑ Sanchez-Salcedo, F.J. (1997). "On the stringent constraint on massive dark clusters in the galactic halo". Astrophysical Journal Letters 487 (1): L61. doi:10.1086/310873. Bibcode: 1997ApJ...487L..61S. 
  43. ↑ Rydberg, C.-E.; Zackrisson, E.; Lundqvist, P.; Scott, P. (March 2013). "Detection of isolated population III stars with the James Webb Space Telescope". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 429 (4): 3658–3664. doi:10.1093/mnras/sts653. Bibcode: 2013MNRAS.429.3658R. 
  44. ↑ Wang, Xin; et al. (8 December 2022). "A strong He II λ1640 emitter with extremely blue UV spectral slope at z=8.16: presence of Pop III stars?". arXiv:2212.04476 [astro-ph.GA].
  45. ↑ Callaghan, Jonathan (30 January 2023). "Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe's First Stars - Theory has it that "Population III" stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.". Quanta Magazine. https://www.quantamagazine.org/astronomers-say-they-have-spotted-the-universes-first-stars-20230130/. Retrieved 31 January 2023. 

Further reading



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