© NASA, ESA, S. Larsen (Radboud University, the Netherlands)
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Hubble Space Telescope has detected the farthest star ever observed. Named Earendel (“Morning Star” in Old English), the light from the star took 12.9 billion years to reach Earth.
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Source: BELGIAN
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The star is one of the largest known stars. The scientists suspect that its mass is at least 50 times that of our sun. It would also be millions of times brighter.
The star that held the record so far was observed by Hubble in 2018. But that star existed in a universe that was then 4 billion years old. Earendel dates back to about 900 million years after the Big Bang, the scientists say.
The discovery was published Wednesday in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. “Studying Earendel will provide a window into a period of the universe that we are unfamiliar with, but which led to everything we know today,” said Brian Welch, of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the research paper.
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