A single low-energy, iron-poor supernova as the source of metals in the star SMSS J 031300.36-670839.3

Understand

The element abundance ratios of four low-mass stars with extremely low metallicities indicate that the gas out of which the stars formed was enriched in each case by at most a few, and potentially only one low-energy, supernova.

• Such supernovae yield large quantities of light elements such as carbon but very little iron.
• The dominance of low-energy supernovae is surprising, because it has been expected that the first stars were extremely massive, and that they disintegrated in pair-instability explosions that would rapidly enrich galaxies in iron.
• What has remained unclear is the yield of iron from the first supernovae, because hitherto no star is unambiguously interpreted as encapsulating the yield of a single supernova.