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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

A giant star’s ‘fingerprint’ reveals a closely held secret

The age of a giant star is one of its most difficult traits to measure, but a new method tells all.
An astronomer works on the main telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Observations by the Sloan Foundation 2.5m Telescope helped scientists to correlate a star’s chemical fingerprint with its age. Credit: Fermilab/Science Photo Library

Astronomers have developed a technique to measure how old a star is by analysing a chemical ‘fingerprint’ of its starlight.

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Nature 573, 312 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02729-8

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