Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope say they have found the most distant star on record, a giant celestial body that existed when the universe was in the early stages of its existence.
The light from the star, called Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English, took 12.9 billion years to reach Earth. In 2013, NASA estimated that the universe was about 13.8 billion years old, which means Earendel was about 900 million years after the big bang. The stars’ findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
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“We almost didn’t believe it at first,” said Brian Welch, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University and the study’s lead author. The previous record for the most distant star ever recorded was the blue star Icarus, which was discovered in 2018 and took 9 billion years to reach Earth, about 4 billion years after the big bang.
While 12.9 billion years seems like a long time ago, Earendel is not the oldest star ever seen. In 2013, Hubble discovered Methuselah, which baffled astronomers as it is estimated to be older than the universe at 14.5 billion years.
Still, the universe was very different from 12.9 billion years ago until now.
“When the light we see from Earendel was emitted, the universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of your current age. At that time, it was 4 billion light-years away from the proto-Milky Way, but during the nearly 13 billion years it took light to reach us, the universe expanded so that it is now a staggering 28 billion years away. light years away. “, said Victoria Strait, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen and co-author of the study, in a statement.
Bigger, brighter than our sun
The researchers noted in the study that Earendel is “consistent with a star with a mass greater than 50 times the mass of the sun” and is millions of times brighter than the center of our solar system.
But it wouldn’t have been found if the stars weren’t aligned, literally.
Between Earth and Earendel is a cluster of galaxies, called WHL0137-08. While this seems to stop Hubble from reaching the star, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that masses of objects will warp space and act as a kind of magnifying glass for things beyond it.
Astronomers said the cluster was in a “rare alignment” that allowed Earendel to appear brighter than it did at another time period, magnified a thousand times. It was located on the edge of a ripple resulting in alignment.
Now that astronomers are aware of the star’s existence, they hope to learn what kind of star it is and more of its properties using the James Webb Space Telescope launched at Christmas. The $10 billion telescope is currently 1 million miles away from Earth.
Aiming to “uncover the mysteries of the universe,” the telescope’s high sensitivity to infrared light could help astronomers understand more about Earendel and offer a glimpse into what the universe was like when it began to expand.
“As we examine the cosmos, we also look back in time, so these extreme high-resolution observations allow us to understand the building blocks of some of the earliest galaxies,” Strait said.
Welch also hopes the telescope will capture stars that could be even further away than Earendel.
“We can see stars even further away than Earendel, which would be incredibly exciting,” he said. “We will go as far as possible. I would love to see Webb break Earendel’s distance record.”
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