José G. Fernández-Trincado

In the crowded center of the Milky Way, individual stars are hard to pick out, but that's exactly where Patchick 126 hides — a faint cluster that has long resisted confident classification. Astronomers pointed the infrared spectrograph IGRINS and the Hubble Space Telescope at it to study its chemistry and age in detail for the first time.

The galaxy's kitchen has a recipe for stellar soup. The main ingredient is hydrogen, but the flavor depends on a pinch of metals. Astronomers have now peered into the pots where that pinch is almost absent, and found that the smallest stars are missing.