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EMBARGOED UNTIL: 2 pm (EDT), July 10, 2003

Don Savage
NASA Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1547; E-mail: dsavage{at}hq.nasa.gov)

Nancy Neal
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-0039; E-mail: nancy.g.neal{at}nasa.gov)

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/338-4514; E-mail: villard{at}stsci.edu)

Barbara Kennedy
Penn State University, University Park, PA
(Phone: 814/863-4682; E-mail: science{at}psu.edu)

Michelle Cook
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
(Phone: 604/822-2048; E-mail: michelle.cook{at}ubc.ca)

Tim Stephens
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
(Phone: 831-459-2495; E-mail: stephens{at}ucsc.edu)

Stuart Walpert
University of California, Los Angeles, CA
(Phone: 310-825-2585; E-mail: stuartw{at}college.ucla.edu)

PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR03-19


HUBBLE HELPS CONFIRM OLDEST KNOWN PLANET

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the
oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of
13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth's 4.5
billion years. It's about as old as a planet can be. It formed around
a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe's
birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable
history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It
orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a
cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a
decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient
world. Until Hubble's measurement, astronomers had debated the
identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble's
analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter,
confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides
tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a
billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that
planets may be very abundant in our galaxy. 

To see and read more about the oldest known planet, click on:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/19

-end-

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for
NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

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