2021/05/20 by J. Tang, M. Joyce
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.SR
published as Res. Notes AAS 5(2021) 117
arxiv created 2021/05/20 · arxiv updated 2021/05/26
In light of recently revised observational measurements of the radius and spectroscopic parameters of the extremely old and metal-poor Gaia benchmark star HD 140283 -- also known as the Methuselah star due to prior suggestions that its age is in tension with the age of the Universe -- we present new, best estimates for the star's mass and age from stellar modeling. These are derived using 1D stellar evolutionary tracks computed with MESA and the most up-to-date measurements from CHARA interferometry. Excluding modeling variance from the uncertainties, we report a mass of 0.809 ± 0.001 M\odot and an age of 12.01 ± 0.05 Gyr (1 σ). When dominant sources of modeling uncertainty are taken into account, we report 0.81 ± 0.05 M\odot and 12 ± 0.5 Gyr, respectively. These results are consistent with recent literature, and the best-fitting age is not in conflict with the currently accepted age of the universe (13.5 Gyr; arXiv:1303.5089 [astro-ph.CO]).