Milky Way: oldest stars ever

[deanm (Dean)]

"The oldest stars ever seen have been discovered near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, astronomers say".

Dean

[tileys]

That's really interesting - to think that some of the oldest stars in the universe are, cosmically speaking, in our own backyard - or is it simply because it is harder to study stars that are further away ?

I only recently appreciated the fact that just about all the bright stars you can see with the naked eye are in the Milky Way - I tended to think of the milky way as being the concentrated band of stars and bodies towards the centre of the galaxy and not those that are in other directions in relation to us Fascinating stuff.

[deanm (Dean)]

Tileys - a good point.

I guess the more distant a star is, the older it must inherently be (because it takes more time for its light to reach us).

However, the further away an object is, the harder it is for us to detect that light (inverse square of intensity vs. distance).

Given that they had to identify stellar sources comprised almost entirely of Helium & Hydrogen (which reveals their age), spectroscopy of more distant objects becomes increasingly difficult.

The good-old signal-to-noise issue, I imagine.

Dean

[tileys]

I had assumed that the 'red shift' which shows which objects are moving away from us would identify that those stars furthest away were getting further away and were also the older ones but this article (and the research behind it) points to some stars that are really quite close (same galaxy) as being really old.

[Kunama]

Very interesting, thanks for the link.

[blink138 (Pat)]

i did not think that stars of similar mass and spectral class to our own could live for the entire age of the universe? should it not be a white dwarf at the very most?
pat