The world’s premier aviation and aerospace institution, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, earned the No.1 spot on U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 ranking of the United States’ best online bachelor’s degree programs, affirming the school’s focus on academic excellence, affordability and promising career opportunities for graduates.

How old are each of the stars in our roughly 13-billion-year-old galaxy? A new technique for understanding the star-forming history of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail makes it possible to determine the ages of stars at least two times more precisely than conventional methods, Embry-Riddle researchers reported this week at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting. Current star-dating techniques, based on assessments of stars in the prime or main sequence of their lives that have begun to die after exhausting their hydrogen, offer a 20-percent, or at best a 10-percent margin of error, explained Embry-Riddle Physics and Astronomy Professor Dr. Ted von Hippel. Embry-Riddle’s approach, leveraging burnt-out remnants called white dwarf stars, reduces the margin of error to 5 percent or even 3 percent, he said.