Hubble image archive
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 ref...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2013
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2013-08-3147-image
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.
Credits
Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAOImage Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | HD 140283 |
| Object Description | Oldest Star in Solar Neighborhood |
| R.A. Position | 15h 43m 3.1s |
| Dec. Position | -10° 56' 0.6" |
| Constellation | Libra |
| Distance | 190.1 light-years (58.3 parsecs) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The Hubble data were taken from HST proposals , , and : 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). |
| Instrument | DSS: Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) |
More Images From This Period
Downloads
Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
View on NASA.gov