Earendel shines millions of times brighter than the Sun and belongs to the “monster” star class of the early universe. If it still exists in real time, it is now located 28 billion light-years away from Earth.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and CSA (the space agencies of the United States, Europe, and Canada), has made a groundbreaking discovery by unveiling the most distant star ever found in the universe: Earendel.
Earendel resembles a monster but has a monotonous composition because it belongs to the primordial star generation, existing in a young universe that was chemically poor and extremely violent.
A panoramic view of the sky containing Earendel, captured through gravitational lensing, where the zoomed-in image shows this object stretched into a red arc of light – (Photo: NASA/ESA/SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE).
This ancient object was first discovered by the older Hubble Space Telescope; however, thanks to the “eye” of the advanced James Webb, scientists can now conduct in-depth studies of it.
New data confirms that Earendel was born 12.9 billion years ago, located 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth. This means the light has taken just as long to reach James Webb, and the image we see of it is a picture of the past.
If it still exists, Earendel is now 28 billion light-years away from Earth due to the significant expansion of the universe since that time.
In fact, both Hubble and James Webb did not directly observe this ancient object but utilized the gravitational lensing effect, according to Space.
Gravitational lensing is a large cosmic structure with enough gravitational force to “bend” space-time, creating a gigantic magnifying glass between the telescope and the object it needs to observe.
In the case of Earendel, the galaxy cluster WHL0137-08 acted as the gravitational lens. This lens distorted the light from the ancient star into a long arc that researchers nicknamed the “Sunrise Arc.”
NASA scientists also calculated that this monster star has a mass at least 50 times that of the Sun and shines millions of times brighter.
This is the origin of the name Earendel, meaning “morning star” or “rising light.” Its brightness allows it to “pierce through” to Earth-based telescopes.
“This discovery gives us the opportunity to study in detail a star in the early universe,” said astrophysicist Brian Welch from Johns Hopkins University (USA), the lead author of the study on Earendel, in an interview with Space.
He also emphasized that this is not the farthest object ever observed. Both Hubble and James Webb have discovered galaxies farther away, but that light comes from stars that are mixed together.
Therefore, it can be said that Earendel is the most distant and oldest star observed distinctly and completely, helping to reveal important details about the evolution of the universe.
