The Light of Earendel – The Most Distant Star Yet Observed

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25250/thescbr.brk674

Keywords:

stars, early universe, gravitational lensing

Abstract

The gravity of massive objects can magnify background objects, making them appear larger and brighter. Precise alignment between a background star and a foreground lens leads to extreme magnifications, allowing individual stars to be detected at great distances. This technique has recently revealed the most distant star yet observed, which existed when the universe was only 900 million years old.

Author Biography

Brian Welch, Johns Hopkins University

Postdoctoral Researcher

Original article reference

Welch, B., Coe, D., Diego, J. M., Zitrin, A., Zackrisson, E., Dimauro, P., Jiménez-Teja, Y., Kelly, P., Mahler, G., Oguri, M., Timmes, F. X., Windhorst, R., Florian, M., de Mink, S. E., Avila, R. J., Anderson, J., Bradley, L., Sharon, K., Vikaeus, A., … Broadhurst, T. (2022). A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2. Nature, 603(7903), 815–818. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04449-y

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Published

2023-02-08

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2023): TheScienceBreaker

Section

Earth & Space

License

Some rights reserved 2023 Brian Welch

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.