The earliest stars and their relics in the Milky Way

Understand

We have implemented a simple model to identify the likely sites of the first stars and galaxies in the high-resolution simulations of the formation of galactic dark matter halos of the Aquarius Project.

• The first star in a galaxy like the Milky Way formed around redshift z=35; by z=10, the young galaxy contained up to 30000 dark matter haloes capable of forming stars by molecular hydrogen cooling.
• These minihaloes were strongly clustered and feedback may have severely limited the actual number of Population III stars that formed.
• By the present day, the remnants of the first stars would be strongly concentrated to the centre of the main halo.