This project began just before Christmas break 2019 with the writing of a telescope proposal to the Las Cumbres observatory (LCO), a network of telescopes found all around the globe. This proposal asked that a 2-meter telescope in Hawaii stare at globular cluster M15 for 60 secs with a B-filter and 60 secs with the V-filter (blue and red optical filters), 120 secs total. A globular cluster is an ancient spherical cluster of stars which found in and around galaxy discs (see figure 1). These observations would provide the necessary data to produce a colour-magnitude diagram (CMD), better known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagram.

Globular clusters are formed during the initial stages of galaxy evolution and are often isolated from acquiring new gas to fuel star formation. Instead globular clusters recycle and reuse their own gas to fuel the formation of new stars. A result of this is that the new stars are smaller and so burn their fuel slower, this means that the stars in these clusters are often very ancient and are good approximants to the age of the galaxies they are hosted by. Therefore, if one can measure enough of these clusters in and around the Milky Way, one could determine a good estimation for the age of the Milky Way which should be in the ballpark of the age of the Universe.

In the analysis of the observations received from LCO after Christmas break, it was estimated that globular cluster M15 was 13.013 +/- 0.355 billion years . A value not far off todays agreed age of the Milky Way of 13.4 +/- 0.1 billion years.

To see a full report on this project see the GitHub link at the top of the page.