Massive news! NASAHubble spots the most distant star yet seen, called Earendel 🌟
Normally, even a star as brilliant as Earendel would be impossible to see from Earth given the vast divide between the two. Previously, the smallest objects seen at such a great distance were clusters of stars embedded inside early galaxies.Earth
The rare way in which Earendel aligned with WHL0137-08 meant that the star appeared directly on, or extremely close to, a curve in spacetime that provided maximum brightening, causing Earendel to stand out from the general glow of its home galaxy. This effect is analogous to the rippled surface of a swimming pool creating patterns of bright light on the bottom of the pool on a sunny day — the ripples on the surface act as lenses and focus sunlight to maximum brightness on the pool floor.
This zoomed-in detail view shows the location of the distant star Earendel along a ripple in space-time that magnified it so that the Hubble Space Telescope could spot it from 12.9 billion light-years away.He also noted this star was distant, but not old."We see the star as it was 12.8 billion years ago, but that does not mean the star is 12.8 billion years old," Welch said. Instead, it's probably just a few million years old and never reached old age.