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takyon writes:

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Oldest and Farthest Star Known

Astronomers announced on Wednesday the discovery of the farthest and oldest star ever seen, a dot of light that shined 12.9 billion years ago, or just 900 million years after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe.

That means the light from the star traveled 12.9 billion light-years to reach Earth.

The finding was part of efforts using the Hubble Space Telescope to search for some of the universe's farthest and earliest galaxies. By a lucky coincidence, the astronomers were able to discern a single star system within one of those galaxies.

[...] The star spotted by Mr. Welch and his colleagues possesses what astronomers call a red shift of 6.2, far higher than the previous record-holder for most distant single star. That star, reported in 2018, had a red shift of 1.5, corresponding to when the universe was about four billion years old.

The researchers nicknamed the new star Earendel — Old English for "morning star." If it is a single star, the astronomers estimate that it is a big one — some 50 times the mass of our sun. It could also be a system of two or more stars.

The alignment of Earendel and the galaxy cluster will persist for years, so Earendel will be one of the targets during the first year of observations by the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, which has a larger mirror than Hubble and gathers light at the longer infrared wavelengths.

A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04449-y

Original Submission