A study detailing the findings was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. This observation breaks the record set by Hubble in 2018 when it observed a star that existed when the universe was about four billion years old. Earendel is so far away that it took 12.9 billion years for starlight to reach us. This observation by Arendel could help astronomers explore the early years of the universe. “As we look at the world, we also look back in time, so these high-resolution extreme observations allow us to understand the building blocks of some of the first galaxies,” said study co-author Victoria Strait, a postdoctoral fellow at Cosmic. The Dawn Center in Copenhagen, in an announcement. “When the light we see from Earendel is emitted, the Universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of its current age. At that time it was 4 billion light-years away from the proto-galaxy, but during its It took 13 billion years for light to reach us, the Universe has expanded so that it is now 28 billion light-years away. The stars we see in the night sky are all in our own galaxy. Incredibly powerful telescopes can only see single stars in the nearest galaxies. But distant galaxies look like a blur of light mixed with the billions of stars they contain. But the gravitational lens, which was predicted by Albert Einstein, allows a deeper look at the distant universe. The gravitational lens appears when the nearest objects act as a magnifying glass for distant objects. Gravity essentially distorts and magnifies the light of distant galaxies in the background. When light passes near bulky objects, a curve follows around that object. If this object is located between the Earth (or in this case, Hubble) and the distant light source, it can actually deflect and send light toward us, acting as a lens to magnify its intensity. Many distant galaxies have been found this way. In this case, the alignment of a huge cluster of galaxies acted as a magnifying glass and amplified Earedel light thousands of times. This gravitational lens, combined with nine hours of observation at Hubble and an international team of astronomers, created the record-breaking image. “Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, with light from millions of stars mingling with each other,” lead author Brian Welch, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement. “The galaxy that hosts this star has been magnified and deformed by a gravitational lens into a long crescent that we called the east arc.” To ensure that this is really a single star, instead of two very close to each other, the research team will use the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope to observe Earendel. Webb could also reveal the temperature and mass of the star. “With James Webb, we will be able to confirm that Earendel is really just a star and at the same time quantify what type of star it is,” said study co-author Sune Toft, head of the Cosmic Dawn Center and professor at Niels. The Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, in a statement. “Webb will even allow us to measure its chemical composition. Probably, Earendel could be the first known example of the first generation of stars in the Universe.” Astronomers want to know more about the composition of the star, because it formed early after the beginning of the universe, long before the universe was filled with the heavy elements created by the deaths of large stars. Webb could reveal if Earendel is largely made of primordial hydrogen and helium, making it the population of Population III – the stars that supposedly exist shortly after the Big Bang. “Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have all the same raw materials as the stars around us today,” Welch said. “Earendel’s study will be a window into an era of the universe that we are not familiar with, but that led to everything we know. It’s like reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter and now we’ll have a chance to see how it all started “. And the Webb telescope can help astronomers find even more distant stars than Hubble can. “With Webb, we can see stars even further away from Arendel, which would be incredibly exciting,” Weltz said. “We will go as far as we can. I would love to see Webb break Earedel’s distance record.”
