The Hubble Space Telescope has seen a star 28 billion light-years distant for the first time. With a mass of 50 to 500 times that of the sun, the star might be a million times brighter than our own.
Stars were found as recently as 900 million years after the Big Bang, making this the most recent finding. Astronomers named the star Earendel, which means “dawn star” or “rising light” in Old English.
The investigation’s detailed findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
This discovery breaks the record set by Hubble in 2018 when it discovered a star that existed about four billion years before the universe was born. Because Earendel is so far away, the star’s light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth.
Astronomers may be able to understand more about the beginnings of the cosmos as a result of this Earendel finding.
All of the stars in the night sky are found in the Milky Way galaxy. Individual stars can only be spotted with extremely powerful telescopes in the closest galaxies. Faraway galaxies are difficult to detect because their light is dimmed by billions of stars.
Albert Einstein, on the other hand, predicted gravitational lensing, which allows humans to view farther into the universe. Gravitational lensing happens when adjacent objects act as magnifying glasses for distant ones. Gravity magnifies and warps light from distant galaxies.
When light approaches within a few feet of massive objects, it bends around them. If that object is between us and the distant light source, it may act as a lens, deflecting and directing the light toward us.
This method has led to the discovery of many distant galaxies.
The configuration of a massive cluster of galaxies serving as a magnifying glass magnified Earendel’s light hundreds of times. A record-breaking image was created by combining gravitational lensing, Hubble observation time, and an international team of scientists.
