Pictor Constellation: 2nd-Gen Star Found in Ancient Dwarf Galaxy | NOIRLab

Pictor Constellation: 2nd-Gen Star Found in Ancient Dwarf Galaxy | NOIRLab

Photo of the constellation Pictor produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer.

Photo of the constellation Pictor with annotations from International Astronomical Union (IAU) and Sky & Telescope

This is a photo of the constellation Pictor produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer. 

Astronomers have discovered one of the most chemically primitive stars ever identified—an ancient stellar relic that preserves the chemical imprint of the very first stars in the Universe. This star, named PicII-503, resides in the tiny, ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Pictor II located in the constellation Pictor. The discovery was enabled by the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, at the National Science Foundation Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.

Pictor II contains several thousand stars and is more than ten billion years old. PicII-503 lies on the outskirts of the galaxy, and it contains less iron than any other star ever measured outside of the Milky Way, while also having an extreme overabundance of carbon. These signatures unmistakably match those of carbon-enhanced stars found in the outer reaches of the Milky Way, whose origins have, until now, been a mystery.

Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani
Release Date: March 16, 2026

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