Because HD 140283 is neither on the main sequence nor a red giant, its position in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram can be interpreted with theoretical models of stellar evolution to infer the stellar age. For field stars (as opposed to stars in clusters) it is rare to know a star's luminosity, surface temperature and composition precisely enough to get a well-constrained value for the stellar age; because of their relative scarcity, this is even rarer for a Population II star like HD 140283. One recent study[6][7] used the Fine Guidance Sensors of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to measure a precise parallax (and therefore distance and luminosity) for the star,[2] and employ this information to estimate an age for the star of 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years.[2] Due to the uncertainty in the value, this age for the star may not conflict with the age of the Universe determined by the Planck satellite, 13.799 ± 0.021.[2][8] Once dubbed the "Methuselah Star" by the popular press due to its age, the star must have formed soon after the Big Bang[2] and is one of the oldest stars known.[9] Accurate determinations of the ages of metal-poor stars, such as HD 140283 and those in globular clusters, set a lower limit for the possible age of the Universe independent of cosmological theory or observations.[10]