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Astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of the abundance of oxygen in a distant galaxy. Oxygen, the third-most abundant chemical element in the universe, is created inside stars and released into interstellar gas when stars die. Knowing the abundance of oxygen in the galaxy called COSMOS-1908 is an important stepping stone toward allowing astronomers to better understand the population of faint, distant galaxies observed when the universe was only a few billion years old and galaxy evolution.
Image credit: Ryan Sanders and the CANDELS team
