Fact Sheet
An Oldie But a Goodie
The oldest planet yet discovered orbits a pair of "dead" stars (the two bright stars at lower left, below the planet) in the globular cluster M4, as seen in this artist's concept. The planet, which was discovered with Hubble Space Telescope, is about 13 billion years old. Because the stars of M4 contain little of the heavy elements required to make planets, the existence of this world implies that planet formation may have been common in the early universe. [Credit: NASA, G. Bacon (STScI)]
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