Universal Clocks
Depicts: M4, NGC 6121
Copyright: NASA and NOAO/AURA/NSF
The ancient white dwarf stars, as seen by Hubble, turn out to be 12 to 13 billion years old. Because earlier Hubble observations show that the first stars formed less than 1 billion years after the universe's birth in the big bang, finding the oldest stars puts astronomers well within arm's reach of calculating the absolute age of the universe.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
