Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered the farthest single star ever observed. It is so far away that it took its light an unimaginable 12.9 billion years to reach Earth. It is located in a galaxy that already existed 900 million years after the Big Bang, reports the American space agency NASA on its website.
“It’s by far the most distant single star we’ve ever seen,” said NASA’s Jane Rigby, a co-author of a Nature journal article describing the discovery. “This is our best opportunity to study what a single, massive star looked like in the early Universe,” said the researcher.
Already existed 900 million years after the big bang
The scientists have nicknamed the distant sun “Earendel” (from the Old English word for morning star; ed.). It was already 900 million years after the Big Bang. By comparison, the previous record holder, dubbed “Icarus”, didn’t exist until about 4.3 billion years after this explosive event. This means that “Earendel” existed shortly after the young universe emerged from an era of darkness when some of the first galaxies evolved.
The record star likely had more than 50 times the mass of our sun and burned up after just a few hundred thousand years, the discovery team reported in the journal “Nature.”
The star could only be observed thanks to the gravitational lensing effect. Under normal circumstances, the light would be too dim to be seen from Earth. The effect occurs when a large mass object, such as a galaxy, passes between the observer and the star they are targeting. The galaxy’s mass amplifies the light emitted by the star, making it easier to see.
Space telescope has been in space since 1990
“Hubble” (pictured below) is a joint project of the American space agency NASA and its European counterpart ESA. It is a visible, ultraviolet and infrared observatory and orbits the Earth every 96 minutes at an altitude of 575 kilometers.
Launched on April 24, 1990 as part of the STS-31 space shuttle mission, it was the first of four space telescopes planned by NASA as part of the Great Observatory program.
Source: Krone
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