How do stars in distant quasars compare to those in our Milky Way?

We do not know for certain because we can never see individual stars so far away. However, from theoretical considerations, astronomers expect that these young stars will be much lower in their heavy element abundances than our Sun. One consequence of this low 'metallicity' is that these young stars will have had less opacity when they formed, and may have been somewhat more massive on average. The most massive of these may have been 100 times the mass of the Sun. Fewer than five such stars are known in the Milky Way, however in the Magellanic Clouds where the metallicity is 10 times less than the Sun, stars do tend to be heavier with many more in the class from 50 - 100 times the mass of the Sun.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
Return to Ask the Astronomer.