NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has set an unusual new benchmark, as it was able to detect the light of a star that was present during the first billion years following the birth of the universe in the big bang, and is the most distant individual star seen so far, it is believed space scientists.
According to NASA, this discovery is a big leap in the past from the previous record holder with a single star, and Hubble discovered it in 2018. This star existed when the universe was regarding 4 billion years old, or 30 percent of its current age. , at which time astronomers refer to it as the “1.5 redshift”. Scientists use the word “redshift” because as the universe expands, light from distant objects expands or “turns” into longer, more red wavelengths as it travels toward us.
The newly discovered star is so far away that its light took 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, as shown to us when the universe was just 7 percent of its current age, at a redshift of 6.2. The smallest objects previously seen at this great distance are clusters of stars, embedded within early galaxies.
“We almost didn’t believe it at first,” said astronomer Brian Welch of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the paper describing the discovery. The discovery was made from data collected during Hubble’s RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey), led by co-author Dan Koe at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), also in Baltimore.
“Usually at these distances, entire galaxies look like little smudges, as the light of millions of stars blend together,” Welch explained. “The galaxy that hosts this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lenses into a long crescent that we call a sunrise arc.”
After studying the galaxy in detail, Welch determined that one feature was a highly magnified star he named Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English. This discovery heralds the opening of an unknown era of early star formation.
He continued, “Erndel has been around for so long that it probably didn’t contain the same raw materials as the stars around us today… Earendel’s study would be a window into an era of the universe we’re not used to, but that led to everything we know.” It’s like we’re reading a really interesting book, but we’re starting with chapter two and now we’ll have a chance to see how it all started.”