The universe's most ancient star came to be 13.7 billion years ago following the big bang.
Scientists from the Australian National University made the find via a SkyMapper telescope in the university's Siding Spring Observatory a press release from the university reported Monday. Scientists are now able to research other original stars that first appeared following the cosmic explosion, or creation of the universe.
"This is the first time that we've been able to unambiguously say that we've found the chemical fingerprint of a first star," Stefan Keller, lead researcher at the University's research school of astronomy and astrophysics said in a statement.
"This is one of the first steps in understanding what those first stars were like," Keller said in the statement. "What this star has enabled us to do is record the fingerprint of those first stars."
"The telltale sign that the star is so ancient is the complete absence of any detectable level of iron in the spectrum of light emerging from the star," Keller said in the statement.
"To make a star like our Sun, you take the basic ingredients of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang and add an enormous amount of iron," Keller said in a statement.
This equals 1,000 times the mass of the Earth the press release reported.
"To make this ancient star, you need no more than an Australia-sized asteroid of iron and lots of carbon," Keller said in the statement. "It's a very different recipe that tells us a lot about the nature of the first stars and how they died."
According to Fox News, the star is named SMSS J031300.36-670839.3, and is older than other 13.2 billion year old stars scientists found in 2007, and 2013
"The stars we are finding number one in a million," team member Professor Mike Bessel said in a statement. "Finding such needles in a haystack is possible thanks to the ANU SkyMapper telescope that is unique in its ability to find stars with low iron from their color," Bessel said in the statement.
