Hyper (n) - a search for the most metal-poor stars in the Galaxy
Hyper will utilise the Southern Sky Survey performed by the SkyMapper telescope to search for stars that exhibit the lowest abundance of the heavy elements.
These stars are exceedingly rare. At present we know of three stars with an Iron abundance less than one ten thousandth that of the Sun.
Hyper has the potential to expand this number by a factor of 200, enabling a leap forward in our understanding of these rare stars.
The stars we are searching for formed not long after the birth of the Universe and hold within them clues to important physical processes occurring in the early Universe that are hidden from us today.
