The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a single star whose light has traveled for 12.9 billion years to Earth, having come from a universe just 900 million years old. It’s currently the most distant star known, and the team has dubbed it Earendel*.
The discovery is a huge jump, as the previous record-holder for more distant star existed in a universe 4 billion years old.
The iconic observatory had some help from nature’s own optics: The vast mass of a foreground cluster of galaxies, sitting just so between us and the distant star, acts like a lens, its gravity magnifying the star’s light thousands-fold. The discovery is published in the March 31st Nature.
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