age of star tagged posts

Rolf Chini has been researching approximately 400 stars in the vicinity of the sun that share some of the sun’s properties for many years. In the process, he and his team have made a very interesting discovery. Credit: © RUB, Nelle

49 Lib, a relatively bright star in the southern sky, is 12 billion years old rather than just 2.3 billion. For many decades, researchers were stumped by conflicting data pertaining to this celestial body, because they had estimated it as much younger than it really is. Determining its age anew, astronomers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have now resolved all inconsistencies. “It had previously been assumed that the star was only half as old as our sun,” says Chini. “However, our data have shown that it had been formed at the time that our galaxy was born...