Astronomers have discovered an 8.2-billion-year-old solar twin that offers a peek at how our sun will look like in future.
A team led by astronomers in Brazil has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to study the oldest solar twin known to date. Located 250 light-years away, the star HIP 102152 is more like the sun than any other solar twin — except that it is nearly four billion years older. This older twin may be host to rocky planets and gives us an unprecedented chance to see how the Sun will look when it ages, researchers said.
“For decades, astronomers have been searching for solar twins in order to know our own life-giving sun better. But very few have been found since the first one was discovered in 1997. We have now obtained superb-quality spectra from the VLT and can scrutinise solar twins with extreme precision, to answer the question of whether the sun is special,” said Jorge Melendez (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), the leader of the team and co-author of the study.
The team studied two solar twins, one that was thought to be younger than the sun.