In
Astronomy, it is common to speak of the chemical makeup of substances in terms of
Hydrogen,
Helium, and
Metals, i.e. elements heavier than Helium.
Metal-poor objects thus contain very little of the elements that were bred in earlier stellar generations (stellar
nucleosynthesis). They are thus usually supposed to be very old or formed out of
primordial material[?].
The term Metal-poor is also called Population II stars.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
