Found: Oldest known stars in our galaxy

[Still Waters]

Some of the twinkling stars that spangle Earth’s skies are relics from the earliest beginnings of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have discovered. Formed within a few billion years of the big bang, these stars populated the burgeoning stellar conglomerate that, over eons, would grow and sculpt itself into the spiral galaxy we live in today.

“They are as old as the oldest stars in the universe,” says Carme Gallart of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, who reports the findings today in the journal Nature Astronomy. The work marks the first time astronomers have pinned precise ages onto these ancient stars, which are a whopping 10 to 13 billion years old.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/07/oldest-known-stars-in-milky-way-galaxy-found-gaia/

[quiXilver]

It strikes me every time I look up at night and consider the stars.

I am seeing the past.

 

How many of the stars we see each night, no longer currently exist?  The light of their endings has not reached us, so we see them as they were, not as they are...