Called Earendel, the star is nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth
The most distant single star seen yet dates back to less than 1 billion years after the universe’s birth in the Big Bang, and may shed light on the earliest stars in the cosmos, a new study finds.
“This finding gives us an opportunity to study a star in detail in the early universe,” study lead author Brian Welch, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told Space.com. The rare way in which Earendel aligned with WHL0137-08 meant that the star appeared directly on, or extremely close to, a curve in spacetime that provided maximum brightening, causing Earendel to stand out from the general glow of its home galaxy. This effect is analogous to the rippled surface of a swimming pool creating patterns of bright light on the bottom of the pool on a sunny day—the ripples on the surface act as lenses and focus sunlight to maximum brightness on the pool floor.
“Given its mass, it almost certainly has not survived to today, as more massive stars tend to burn through their fuel faster and thus explode, or collapse into black holes, sooner,” he added of Earendel. “The oldest stars known would have formed at a similar time, but they are much less massive, so they have continued to shine until today.”
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