Hubble Telescope detects farthest single star ever seen from Earth

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2-04-2022, 20:15

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INA – SOURCES

The Hubble Space Telescope detected the farthest individual star seen to date this week in a collaboration that included reliable researchers.

The newly discovered star existed within the first billion years after the Big Bang and provides insight farther back in time than we previously had after Hubble discovered a star in 2018 that existed when the universe was about four billion years old.

Since the discovery of the 2018 star, others like it have been found closer to Earth, but finding a star as far away as the new one relies on perfect conditions which are rare.

The star is so far away from Earth that it has taken 12.9 billion years for its light to reach us. At this distance, scientists have only been able to see galaxies containing billions of stars, and the smallest objects detected were star clusters.

Now, it has been detected as a single star at this distance. The breakthrough was made possible because a cluster of galaxies aligned, magnifying the star a few thousand-fold.