Artist’s view of ancient star (Annotated)

This is an illustration of the oldest star ever found in our solar neighborhood. The ageing star, catalogued as HD 140283, lies over 190 light-years from Earth. NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations narrowed the measurement uncertainty on the star's distance, and this helped to refine the calculation of a more precise age of 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 800 million years).

Because the ageing star is relatively nearby, familiar stars and constellations as seen from Earth are visible in the surrounding sky, but in different locations. In the upper left is the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), which looks distorted from our new perspective in space. Just to the upper left of the foreground star is the Pleiades cluster. To the lower left of the cluster, our Sun has dimmed to an apparent magnitude of +7, placing it below naked-eye visibility.