Last time I checked it was HE 1523 (catchy name) – it’s about 13.2 billion years old – so was around soon after the big bang (which was supposed to have occured 13.7 billion years old).
The oldest stars in our galaxy are over 13 billion years old – the oldest one was discovered by the excellently named Very Large Telescope and is an ancient red giant. Very stars pose a bit of a problem because we don’t quite understand them fully. If we assume they formed in similar ways to current stars then they would be older than the universe – which means w]they must have formed or aged different. They are an interesting area of research.
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