A metal-poor star with abundances from a pair-instability supernova.

The most massive and shortest-lived stars dominate the chemical evolution of the pre-galactic era. On the basis of numerical simulations, it has long been speculated that the mass of such first-generation stars was up to several hundred solar masses. The very massive first-generation stars with a mass range from 140 to 260 solar masses are predicted to enrich the early interstellar medium through pair-instability supernovae (PISNe).