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.

Other resources

Internal links

• stellar population
• population III
• metal-rich
• metallicity

See also

• Abundance of the chemical elements