Oldest Star in Solar Neighborhood

This is a Digitized Sky Survey image of the oldest star with a well-determined age in our galaxy. The aging star, cataloged as HD 140283, lies 190.1 light-years away. Hubble Space Telescope was used to narrow the measurement uncertainty on the star's distance, and this helped refine the calculation of a more precise age of 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 800 million years).

The star is rapidly passing through our local stellar neighborhood. The star's orbit carries it through the plane of our galaxy from the galactic halo that has a population of ancient stars. The Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) UK Schmidt telescope photographed the star in blue light.

About the data

The Hubble data were taken from HST proposals 9883 , 10110 , and 10480 : PI: D. VandenBerg (University of Victoria), H. Bond (STScI and Pennsylvania State University), and E. Nelan (STScI).

The science team comprises: H. Bond (STScI and Pennsylvania State University), E. Nelan (STScI), D. VandenBerg (University of Victoria), G. Schaefer (CHARA, Mt. Wilson Observatory), and D. Harmer (NOAO).