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The Oldest Known Star in Our Universe
listverse.comThe oldest stars would be the ones formed just after the Big Bang (about 13.8 billion years ago). Astronomers can estimate the age of stars by looking at their starlight—it tells them how much of each element (e.g. hydrogen, helium, lithium) is in the star. The oldest stars tend to have mostly hydrogen and helium with very little mass devoted to heavier elements.
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Located around 6,000 light-years away and possibly in the galactic halo, SMSS J031300.36-670839.3, the brightesr star in the above image, is an ancient star that may be as much as 13.6 billion years old.
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The oldest known visible star is named
SMSS J031300.36-670839.3. Its discovery was published in February 2014. It’s estimated to be 13.6 billion years old, but it’s not one of the first, original stars. None of them have yet been found, but some may still be around. Red dwarfs can live trillions of years, after all. If there are any, there won’t be many, so looking for them would be the ultimate needle-in-a-haystack search.
Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/07/the-oldest-known-stars-in-our-universe.html
