{"id":2651,"date":"2022-03-30T15:55:36","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T15:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/03\/30\/meet-earendel-the-most-distant-star-ever-detected\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T15:55:37","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T15:55:37","slug":"meet-earendel-the-most-distant-star-ever-detected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/03\/30\/meet-earendel-the-most-distant-star-ever-detected\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Earendel, the most distant star ever detected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/3\/30\/23002980\/earendel-hubble-most-distant-star-gravitational-lensing-jwst<\/a>
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The most distant star \u2014 or possibly pair of stars \u2014 that astronomers have ever seen was just revealed thanks to the Hubble telescope and a massive cluster of galaxies. Far from Earth, the universe bends around the vast bulk of a galaxy cluster, creating a gravitational lens in spacetime much like the curved lens in a magnifying glass. Like a magnifying glass, it revealed something small and hidden: a star system from the early universe. <\/p>\n

The far-away star system takes the official name WHL0137-LS, but the astronomers who found it nicknamed it \u201cEarendel\u201d from the Old English word meaning \u201cmorning star\u201d or \u201crising light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earendel system as we\u2019re seeing it today was shining within just 900 million years of the Big Bang, according to the authors of a new paper in the journal Nature<\/em><\/a> describing the discovery. Fully 12.8 billion years passed before that light reached the Hubble Space Telescope, magnified by a lucky trick of gravity to appear as a tiny smudge of photons on Hubble\u2019s image sensor. Earendel is 8.2 billion years older than the Sun and Earth and 12.1 billion years older than our planet\u2019s first animals. <\/p>\n

Even by the standards of ancient stars, Earendel stands out: astronomers observed the previous record holder, nicknamed Icarus, as it appeared 9.4 billion years ago \u2014 3.4 billion years more recently than this new record-holder. Even the oldest known supernovas, usually the brightest and most easily-spotted individual objects across the immensity of spacetime, are younger than Earendel.<\/p>\n

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An image of Icarus, the previous record holder for the the farthest individual star ever seen. The left image shows the massive galaxy cluster that sits between Earth and Icarus. From NASA: \u201cThe panels at the right show the view in 2011, without Icarus visible, compared with the star\u2019s brightening in 2016.\u201d<\/figcaption>NASA, ESA, and P. Kelly (University of Minnesota)<\/cite><\/p>\n

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Seeing through the gravity lens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earendel\u2019s home galaxy, the Sunrise arc, takes its name from that gravitational lensing effect that made this discovery possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis galaxy appears magnified and stretched into a long, thin crescent shape due to the gravitational lensing effect of a massive cluster of galaxies in the foreground,\u201d said Brian Welch, a Johns Hopkins University astronomer and lead author of the Nature<\/em> paper.<\/p>\n

Welch told The Verge<\/em> that he stumbled across Earendel while he was studying the gravitational lens itself.<\/p>\n

Gravitational lenses, like magnifying glasses, tend to warp and twist images and have areas of higher and lower magnification. If you have a magnifying glass at home, the best magnification is likely <\/strong>at the center of a simple circle. Gravitational lenses are trickier to use.<\/p>\n

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