Local stars formed at z>10: a sample extracted from the SDSS

As the Universe emerged from its initial hot and dense phase, its chemical composition was extremely simple, being limited to stable H and He isotopes, and traces of Li. The first stars that formed had such initial composition. However, they quickly began to produce a whole array of heavier nuclei, polluting the interstellar medium. While none among these first stars has been detected to date, an increasing sample exists of their direct descendant, stars with heavy elements content of the order of 1/1000 of the solar value, or less. In most cases, such stars should have formed at redshift of about 10 or beyond, and their chemical composition can provide crucial constraints to the nature of the very first stars. Extremely metal poor (EMP) stars are exceedingly rare. We used the low resolution spectra obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to search for EMP candidates: results of VLT-UVES high resolution follow-up for 16 of them is presented here. A newly developed automatic abundance analysis and parameter determination code, MyGIsFOS, has been employed to analyze the detailed chemical abundances of such stars.