Science
Related: About this forumHUBBLE SEES THE FARTHEST STAR IN THE UNIVERSE
MARCH 30, 2022, 11:00 AM ET
A gravity assist helps the 'scope see a star 12.9 billion light-years away
By Phil Plait
Staring at the same spot in the sky for the better part of a day, Hubble Space Telescope aided by a quirk of gravity that can massively magnify distant objects may have spotted the most distant star ever seen
by a huge margin. If confirmed, the star is nearly 13 billion light years away, and we see it as it was when the Universe was only 900 million years old.
If confirmed, this is the farthest star in the Universe ever seen by humans.
!!!
There are some caveats and such, but even taking those into account this object is terrifically far away and very likely to mark a distance record that wont be broken for a while.
The star was found in a series of observations made of a cluster of galaxies called WHL 013708, located on the sky in the constellation of Cetus. Galaxy clusters can contain dozens to hundreds of galaxies, and WHL 0137-08 is a bruiser: Observations indicate it has a total mass of a whopping 900 trillion times that of the Sun, enough to make a thousand galaxies like the Milky Way.
WHL 0137-08 is about 5.5 billion light years from Earth, over a third of the way across the observable Universe. Still, theres a lot of real estate on the other side of it, and many galaxies lie beyond. Heres where the Universe itself helps us out: The gravity of a cluster of galaxies can distort the light coming from even more distant galaxies on its way to us. The distortion can multiply images of images of objects so we see more than one of each, it can warp the shape, and, most importantly here, it can magnify the brightness of the more distant object. This effect is similar to how a lens behaves, so its called gravitational lensing.
More:
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-farthest-star-ever-seen-almost-13-billion-light-years-away
muriel_volestrangler
(102,082 posts)I'm a huge Tolkien nerd, so that was one of the first name ideas that came to mind for a distant star, explains Welch. When I looked into it further and found that the old English word Earendel actually refers to a morning star, I was pretty much sold on the name.
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/meet-earendel-most-distant-star-astronomers-have-observed/
Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)Presumably it is the same, as it's also referred to as "earendel".
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/30/world/hubble-distant-star-image-scn/index.html
SmallFry
(349 posts)Is just as exciting to read about as the find itself.
The research team estimates that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of our Sun and millions of times as bright, rivaling the most massive stars known. But even such a brilliant, very high-mass star would be impossible to see at such a great distance without the aid of natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08, sitting between us and Earendel. The mass of the galaxy cluster warps the fabric of space, creating a powerful natural magnifying glass that distorts and greatly amplifies the light from distant objects behind it.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/record-broken-hubble-spots-farthest-star-ever-seen