Hipparcos Parallax Data May Reconcile Ages of Globular Clusters and the Universe
SEP 01, 1997
The number of stars for which we have accurate distances has suddenly grown a hundredfold. It’s already affecting estimates of the age of the cosmos.
DOI: 10.1063/1.881931
In the summer of 1989, the European Space Agency launched the High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite—Hipparcos, for short. The name of this first automated astrometry orbiter honors Hipparchus of Nicea, who diligently compiled a catalog of the celestial positions and brightnesses of more than a thousand stars in the second century BC.
© 1997. American Institute of Physics
