Population I

Populations I and II, in astronomy, two broad classes of stars and stellar assemblages defined in the early 1950s by the German-born astronomer Walter Baade. The members of these stellar populations differ from each other in various ways, most notably in age, chemical composition, and location within galactic systems.

Since the 1970s, astronomers have recognized that some stars do not fall easily into either category; these stars have been subclassified as “extreme” Population I or II objects.

Population I consists of younger stars, clusters, and associations—i.e., those that formed about 1,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 years ago. Certain stars, such as the very hot blue-white O and B types (some of which are less than 1,000,000 years old), are designated as extreme Population I objects. All known Population I members occur near and in the arms of the Milky Way system and other spiral galaxies. They also have been detected in some young irregular galaxies (e.g., the Magellanic Clouds). Population I objects are thought to have originated from interstellar gas that has undergone various kinds of processes, including supernova explosions, which enriched the constituent matter. As a result, such objects contain iron, nickel, carbon, and certain other heavier elements in levels that approximate their abundance in the Sun; like the Sun, however, they consist mostly of hydrogen (about 90 percent) and helium (up to 9 percent).

Population II consists of the oldest observed stars and clusters, which formed about 1,000,000,000 to 15,000,000,000 years ago. These stellar objects are relatively rich in hydrogen and helium but poor in elements heavier than helium, containing 10 to 100 times less of these elements than Population I stars, because such heavier elements had not yet been created in large quantities at the time of their formation. RR Lyrae variable stars and other Population II stars are found in the halos of spiral galaxies and in the globular clusters of the Milky Way system. Large numbers of these objects also occur in elliptical galaxies.

Baade’s framework has been extended to Population III stars, hypothetical objects that would have been the very first stars to form in the universe out of the interstellar gas clouds that emerged shortly after the big bang, a state of extremely high temperature and density from which the universe is believed to have originated. These objects would have been almost completely made up of hydrogen and helium, and they would have left behind interstellar clouds from which Population II stars formed. No Population III stars have yet been observed, possibly because all Population III stars were high-mass stars and thus have all ended their lives as stellar remnants such as black holes and neutron stars.