Astronomers have discovered the farthest star yet, a super-hot, super-bright giant that formed nearly 13 billion years ago at the dawn of the cosmos.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. --
The previous record-holder, Icarus, also a blue supergiant star spotted by Hubble, formed 9.4 billion years ago. That's more than 4 billion years after the Big Bang. "Usually they're all smooshed together ... But here, nature has given us this one star - highly, highly magnified, magnified by factors of thousands - so that we can study it," said NASA astrophysicist Jane Rigby, who took part in the study."It's such a gift really from the universe."
Current data indicate Earendel was more than 50 times the size of our sun and an estimated 1 million times brighter, outsizing Icarus. Earendel's small, yet-to-mature home galaxy looked nothing like the pretty spiral galaxies photographed elsewhere by Hubble, according to Welch, but rather"kind of an awkward-looking, clumpy object." Unlike Earendel, he said, this galaxy probably has survived, although in a different form after merging with other galaxies.