The most distant single star seen yet dates back to less than 1 billion years after the universe’s birth in the Big Bang, and may shed light on the earliest stars in the cosmos, a new study finds.
The scientists nicknamed the star “Earendel,” from an Old English word meaning “morning star” or “rising light.” Earendel, whose technical designation is WHL0137-LS, is at least 50 times the mass of the sun and millions of times as bright.
This newfound star, detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, appearing to us as it was when the universe was about 900 million years old, just 7% of its current age. Until now, the most distant single star detected, discovered by Hubble in 2018, existed when the universe was about 4 billion years old, or 30% of its current age.
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