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Yeah.

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So we found an individual star,
which is the most distant

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individual star
that has been found thus far.

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So normally
when we look at very distant objects,

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what we're seeing
is the light from an entire galaxy.

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So millions of stars all blended together,

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and we've been able to see those out
to even farther distances.

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But in this case, thanks to a very massive
cluster of galaxies in the foreground,

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the light from this one star
has just been very, very highly magnified.

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So we're able to see this single star

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at a much greater distance.

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So it's when the universe was less
than 1 billion years old.

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So we're looking nearly 13 billion years
into the past

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when we look at this object

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Yeah.

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So it's thanks to two things, really.

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So we have, first of all, the incredible
power of the Hubble Space Telescope

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that's something that you really need
to be able to see something like this

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and then combine that
with an additional telescope in space.

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So through something
called gravitation lensing,

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a very massive

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cluster of galaxies actually bends
the light from the background object.

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And in doing so,
just like looking through a glass lens,

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it focuses the light onto our telescope.

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And in this case,
we get just the right alignment

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with the lens
and with the star in the background

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that we get really,
really high magnifications.

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So in this case, it's
magnified by a factor of thousands.

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Whereas typically, you know,
if you have a lensed galaxy,

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it would be magnified by a factor
of a few to perhaps ten.

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So in this case, we just got really lucky
with the alignment.

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So we can really see very small details

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in this background object

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I think the most interesting thing
is that it's looking back to a time

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when the universe was much different
than what it is today. So

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what we've seen of

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galaxies at this early time, we can tell
that they're structured very differently

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and that they look quite a bit different
than galaxies that we see nearby.

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For example, the Milky Way
and our nearest neighbor, Andromeda,

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So it stands to reason that stars

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at such a great distance
will look a little bit different, too.

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And we just haven't had the opportunity
to really study one in detail yet.

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So I think what I'm most interested in
and what I'm most excited by is the fact

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that we now have an opportunity
to really pinpoint one object

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and look at it in detail.

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Yeah,
Hubble and Webb are very complementary.

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So Hubble obviously gets the shorter
wavelengths of light,

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and Webb is able to target longer
wavelengths.

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So when you combine those,
you get a much broader understanding of

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whatever objects we're looking at.

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In my case as well,

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my group has both Hubble and Webb
observations scheduled at the same time.

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So we're going to be able to get

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Hubble observations of this lensed star

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and Webb observations over a similar time
period within the next year or so.

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So we'll will very much so be
using the data from both of them together.

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And that's going to make our analysis
of this

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much more powerful

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Yeah.

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You can learn more from the NASA website.

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So nasa.gov/Hubble,
you can also follow

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on social media @NASAHubble.

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They also, especially on Instagram,
have lots of pretty pictures

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from the Hubble telescope.

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That's one of my favorite accounts
to follow

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So right now we can constrain roughly

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how bright it is and that can tell us
about how massive it is.

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So we can estimate
with the existing Hubble data

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that it's about 50 to
100 times the mass of the sun

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We also know that

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obviously it's at a time when the universe
was less than a billion years old.

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So we can infer that it's probably going
to look a little bit different

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than stars that we would see
in the Milky Way, for example.

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And this is something that we're planning
to follow up with the James

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Webb Space Telescope.

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So with that, we'll be able to say more.

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But right now we can tell that it's
a very massive star and it's going to be

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a very interesting object
to continue to study

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It is very likely no longer alive.

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It is so massive.

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Stars tend to live fast and die young,

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and this one being 50 to 100 times

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the mass of the sun,
is absolutely living up to that.

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So it would have a lifetime
of a few hundred million years.

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So it is most certainly
no longer around today.

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So it's

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it's one of the few cases where the star
that we're seeing is long dead.

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By the time we're able to see it

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So when we look back into the very distant

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universe, into a time when the universe
was less than a billion years old,

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there's been much less time for stars
to have lived and died and spread

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the heavier elements that they form
into the rest of the universe.

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And so that means that this star is

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much more likely to be

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low metallicity,
which means that there's not much else

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besides hydrogen and helium,

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and therefore, it's probably going to look
quite a bit different than the stars

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that we see today.

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Like the sun.

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In part, it ends up being much
more massive because of that.

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And it's since we know

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that the universe at this time is quite
a bit different than the universe today.

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It's going to be very exciting
to follow this up and get more information

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about it.

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Hubble's doing great.

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It's obviously
still making a lot of great discoveries,

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and it's continuing to
to pursue a wide array of science.

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And we expect that it will continue
to do well

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and make awesome discoveries
like this for years to come.

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I would love to say

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that there was a eureka moment,
but it was really much more of a slow burn

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It turned into a lot of double checking
whether or not

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we got our models right and trying
to figure out if we did something wrong

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to get such a high magnification

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But once we did eventually

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get to a point that we believed
that this was really a star

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at such a great distance,
it was incredibly exciting.

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And it was really fun
to get to work on something like this

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and to be part of this discovery

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Yeah.

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So the star is nicknamed Earendel,
which is an old English word

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that means the Morning Star

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So the time period
that we found the object

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in within the first billion years
is referred to generally as Cosmic Dawn.

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So we found that a sort of

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Morning Star kind of name fit very well.

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It's also for the Lord of the Rings
nerds out there.

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It's the same old English word
that Tolkien

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used for inspiration
for a character from the Silmarillion

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who also ends up becoming a star.

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So it's a nice parallel there

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and we just
we figured that The Morning Star

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seemed to fit for such an early object

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So I was kind of given a typical grad
student

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project of Here's
some data, see what you can find

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So we knew that the galaxy
that this star is sitting

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in was very highly magnified
by the foreground

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galaxy cluster, which is acts as the lens.

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So we end up seeing the lensed galaxy

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as this long banana shaped arc.

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And we can tell from the
just the first image

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that it was longer than any lensed arc

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at this distance that we had seen before.

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So I was given the task of

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figuring out what the galaxy looked like.

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And in the process of that

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and the process of figuring out
how highly magnified it was, I

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sort of stumbled
on to the fact that this one part of it

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seemed like it was at a very,
very high magnification.

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And the more that we looked into it,
the more it became clear

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that it was too small to be anything
other than a star.

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So that was how we sort of came to
the conclusion that this is a lensed star.