02 February, 1998. Using the Hubble space Telescope and large ground-based telescopes such as the 10-meter Keck instruments in Hawaii, astronomers are beginning to zero in on an agreed value of the Hubble constant. Various methods of obtaining distance yield a value of around 65 kilometers per second per megaparsec, 15% lower than previously indicated. Not counting for gravitational drag, this value yields an age for the Universe of about 15 billion years, more in line with the ages of the globular clusters, especially as revised by new distances based on Hipparcos satellite parallax measurements of nearby stars.