Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe Earendel, the most distant star from Earth that had ever been imaged.
Huge Star: Earendel
“Eärendel is so distant that the starlight glimpsed by the Webb telescope was emitted within the first billion years of the universe. It is estimated that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old,” explains CNN on its website.
Although previous research suggests the star was 12.9 billion light-years from Earth, but due to the expansion of the Universe and the time light travels to reach the planet, astronomers say Earendel is currently 28 billion light-years away. light years away.
A million times hotter than the Sun
Earendel comes from Old English which translates as “morning star” or “rising light”. Earendel was first seen in 2022 by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Given the image captured by Webb, astronomers discovered important facts about Earendel, such as that it is a massive B-type star and “approximately 1 million times more luminous than our sun and more than twice as hot,” adds CNN.
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How was Earendel captured?
Earendel is located in the Sunrise Arc galaxy and could only be seen because the galaxy cluster, named WHL0137-08, between Earth and Earendel exaggerated the light from the star.
It is called gravitational lensing and occurs when nearby objects are magnified like a magnifying glass despite being distant. “Gravity essentially warps and magnifies the light from distant background galaxies. In this case, the cluster of galaxies intensified the light from Eärendel thousands of times”, describes the portal.