That is the most
distant individual star that has been seen so far.
It's so far away that it exists at a time
that the universe was only about 900 million years old
as compared to its current age, which is about 13.8 billion years.
So we're really looking back into a time when the universe was much different
than it is today.
And being able to see an individual star at this time is really exciting.
We've been able to see entire galaxies at this distance, but
that's the light from millions of stars all blended together.
So being able to pick out just this one individual star is really exciting,
and it gives us a really awesome opportunity to study it in a lot of detail
and get a better sense of what stars in the early universe look like.
Hubble was able to see this thanks to its incredible power
and also the assistance from a cosmic telescope known as a gravitational lens.
So there's a very massive cluster of galaxies that's sitting in the foreground,
and that cluster actually bends the space around it.
And as the light from this background galaxy travels through that bend space,
it gets magnified and distorted as it goes through this bend space.
And what that gives us is an image of the galaxy
that's spread out into this long, crescent shaped arc
that's much brighter than we could normally see this galaxy.
And in particular, in one unique spot, the magnification that we get from
this gravitational lensing effect really increases dramatically.
And the star just happens to be sitting right at that point
where it's magnified by a factor of several thousand.
So it's really highly magnified, which is the way that we're able
to pick out the light from just this one individual star among this this
entire galaxy.
So when we
look out at distant objects, because light travels at a finite speed, it
takes that light a certain amount of time to get from its source to us.
And as we look into more and more distant objects,
we're basically looking into the ever more distant past
as we look at things that are emitting light billions of years ago.
So in this particular case, the object is so distant
that if the light came from it only 900 million years after the Big Bang.
So it's been traveling towards us for about 12.8 billion years.
So we're really this really gives us a window
into what the universe was like that back in that early day.
And it looks at the universe we know looks a lot different back at that point.
So the opportunity to study this one individual star
at this really early stage of the universe is really exciting and really gives us a
unique view into how the universe worked and how these stars formed and came to be
in the universe.
Hubble and Webb are going to be incredibly complementary.
So Hubble is designed to look at the ultraviolet and optical wavelengths.
That's bluer light than what we can see with our eyes in the ultraviolet.
And then optical is the light that we see with our own eyes.
Meanwhile, the Webb telescope was designed to look into the infrared.
So that's light that's redder than what we can see with our own eyes.
So together they give a really complete picture across this broad
range of wavelengths for all these distant objects that we can look at.
And each both of them together can do a much better job
than either one could do on their own.
You can learn more
at nasa.gov/Hubble or follow on social media @NASAHubble
So we know that this is a very massive star.
We have it at least 50 times the mass of the sun,
which is much larger than a typical star in the local universe.
There are certainly examples of stars of this mass,
but they're not nearly as common as much smaller stars.
We expect that in the distant universe, these massive stars might be a little bit
more common.
So being able to study one directly is going to be really exciting.
We also know that in the early universe, the chemical composition
of stars might look a little bit different than it does today.
So there haven't there hasn't been as much time for multiple generations
of stars to live and die and enrich the surrounding
environment with the heavier elements that they produce.
So being able to study this massive star at a time when the universe was made up
of slightly different materials is going to be really exciting
and a really great way to figure out how these stars are forming
and what they look like and how they live and how they evolve
Hubble is doing great.
It is continuing to make fascinating discoveries.
It's continuing to collect amazing observations of the universe,
and we have a great team of people that's working on it,
and we really do expect it to continue to make groundbreaking discoveries
for years to come
I am definitely most looking forward to my own observations.
So we have Hubble and Webb time as scheduled for this coming year
to look at this lens star though, and it's the combination of the two
is going to be really exciting to get a much better constraint on
what the star looks like and what it was formed from and what type of star it is.
So I'm definitely most excited for those
things.
Yeah, we nicknamed the star Earendel,
which is an old English word that means Morning Star.
So this this epic of the universe
is generally referred to as Cosmic Dawn.
Since it's the time when these first stars are starting
to form in the first galaxies or taking shape and sort of the
the first light of the universe is just breaking through.
So we figured that
a morning star nickname would fit in really well.
And I liked the way that Earendel sounded.
It is also the old English word that J.R.R.
Tolkien used as the name of a character from his Silmarillion.
So I'm a huge Tolkien fan as well,
so that symmetry fit in really well,
and it just seemed like a really great choice for the name
we were looking at the galaxy
originally, so the lens galaxy that the star is a part of.
As I mentioned,
with gravitational lensing,
it spreads these galaxies out into these long crescent shaped arcs.
And this particular one was the longest arc that had been seen
of a galaxy that was within the first billion years of the universe.
So it seemed like a really interesting galaxy to study.
And then we just kind of
stumbled on to the star as we were modeling the lensing effect.
It turned out that our models kept predicting that at this one point,
this one bright point on the arc was going to be very highly magnified.
We almost didn't believe it at first.
It seemed almost too good to be true.
But as we kept making more models and double and triple checking,
it just kept holding up that this one particular spot
was only consistent with being a lensed star
I would say it is very unlikely.
So we know from stars in the local universe that we don't tend
to see planets around the most massive stars.
This could partially be an observation effect
because it's harder to spot planets around much larger, much brighter stars.
But it's also possible that these more massive stars
are just too large and the light from them is just too powerful
to allow planets to form Also, back in the early universe,
the materials that you need to make up these planets were much less abundant.
So it would be a lot less likely
that we could actually form a planet at back at this early time.
And as far as life goes,
only 900 million years after the Big Bang is not a whole lot of time.
Cosmically speaking, at least to to form anything as complicated as life.
So I would say that it's pretty unlikely.