2012MNRAS.425.1308B

We present a consistent model atmosphere analysis and evolutionary tracks for the very nearby G-type star 82 Eri that was most recently announced by Pepe et al. to harbour two or three super-Earth companions with orbital periods of 18, 40 and 90d. As a bright and high-velocity object, 82 Eri was already realized by Jan Hendrik Oort in his 1926 treatise to be of `probably different origin' and we confirm its being a member of the ancient thick-disc population on account of its outstanding iron-to-magnesium deficiency. Thus, in our immediate neighbourhood – only 6pc away – there exists a system of extremely old and probably rocky super-Earths that were already formed when the Milky Way was at its infancy, 12 or even 13 billion years in the past.