An artist’s impression of star formation in the early universe Adolf Schaller for STScI/NASA Astronomers have had the most compelling glimpse yet of some of the universe’s first stars . These are unlike any other stars we have seen and could help us understand crucial properties about the early universe, such as how massive the earliest stars were and how they shaped those that formed later. It is thought that the first stars to form in our universe were made from almost entirely from hydrogen and helium, with no heavier elements. They were also enormous and blazingly hot, hundreds of times more massive and tens of thousands degrees hotter than the sun. But because most of these so-called Population III stars lived for only a relatively short amount of time before blowing up, astronomers have yet to conclusively find a galaxy filled with them because they existed so early in the universe’s history.…