Methuselah: Oldest Known Star HD 140283

Credit: Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAO

This Digitized Sky Survey image shows the oldest star with a well-determined age in our galaxy. Called the Methuselah star, HD 140283 is 190.1 light-years away. 

Astronomers refined the star's age to about 14.5 billion years (which is older than the universe), plus or minus 800 million years. 

Image released March 7, 2013.

Because the aging star is relatively nearby, familiar stars and constellations as seen from Earth are in the sky, but in different locations, as seen in this annotated view.

At upper left is the constellation Orion, 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.