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Technically just one of the three stars (the big one). The other two are 500 million and 1.5 billion years old.
Shark facts aside, the fact that Polaris is a ternary system, rather than a single star has completely blown my mind.
My grandfather, in the army in the 1950s, mentioned that there was an eyesight test by having cadets look at a star and ask them how many light points they saw.
I'm not convinced it was Polaris and its partners, there might have been another star system used as the test. I learned about Polaris being a triple star system years later.
If anyone knows what star systems would had been used as an eye test... I imagine it's something that could be within our eyes limits.
Unlikely Polaris. The luminosity difference between Polaris Aa and the other two is 3 orders of magnitude. Mizar and Alcor (the doublet second from the end of the Big Dipper) has been used for centuries as a vision test. If you can see the doublet, it’s equivalent to 20/20 (or 6/6) on an eye chart.
I just got off the phone with him and that was it! Thanks!
Amazing!
Seriously! Thank you for confirming!
I did a bit more research and found this link outlining how they have been used as eye tests for a long time! Fascinating!
Source? Stars in multiple star systems are usually the same age.
I found a source saying he's mistaken. If you scroll way down, it says all three stars are 70 million years old.
They don't cite sources, but I'm open to it if there are sources!
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ASPC..529...72N/abstract is my source for the ages but if there's newer data please enlighten me!
The snopes article someone posted goes into that