Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Astronomers used the “James Webb” space telescope to observe “Earendel”, the most distant star ever discovered.
Eärendel is so far away that the starlight detected by Webb’s telescope was emitted in the first billion years of the universe’s life.
The universe is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years old.
Previous estimates put the star at 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth, but given the expansion of the universe and the time it took for light to reach us, astronomers believe that Eärendel is currently 28 billion light-years away.
The star’s name “Earendl” is derived from Old English words, meaning “morning star” or “rising light”. The “Hubble” space telescope discovered the star “Earendelle” for the first time in 2022.
Webb’s observations have revealed stunning new images of the distant star.
Eärendel is a massive B-type star about a million times brighter than our Sun and twice as hot.
The star is located in the Sunrise Bow galaxy and can only be seen because a massive cluster of galaxies called WHL0137-08, a group of galaxies between Earth and Eärendel, has amplified the distant star’s light.
This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing which occurs when closer objects act like a magnifying glass for distant objects. Gravity essentially distorts and magnifies the light of distant background galaxies. In this case, the cluster of galaxies has intensified the light of Eerndel’s star thousands of times.
Massive stars like Eärendel usually have companion stars, and while astronomers didn’t expect to be able to spot one, the colors detected by the James Webb telescope indicate the possibility of a red companion star.
An image taken by the James Webb telescope shows a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08, and to the right is the largest known magnifying galaxy in the first billion years of the universe, dubbed the Sunrise Bow.Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA
Webb’s ability to peer into the distant universe and observe in infrared light that is invisible to the naked eye also revealed details in the Arc Sun galaxy. The space observatory monitored star birth regions and small clusters of stars.
Astronomers continue to analyze data from the Webb observations to determine the exact distance to the Sagittarius galaxy.
Studying the very distant stars and galaxies that formed near the Big Bang is able to fill in the gaps astronomers have about the early days of the universe, and provide a glimpse into what our own Milky Way galaxy looked like billions of years ago.
Webb’s ability to study an object this small and far away is encouraging for astronomers. It may eventually be possible to spot the first stars born from raw elements like hydrogen and helium, right after the birth of the universe.
