Hubble Space Telescope Captures Most Distant Individual Star

NASA has said that the Hubble Space Telescope has captured a record-making image, which shows the most distant individual star ever seen. 

According to NASA, the star is 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth and was formed within a billion years of the Big Bang, which created the universe about 13.8 billion years ago. The star is expected to be 50 times larger than the Sun and is thought to be millions of times brighter.

The star is dubbed as Earendel, which means morning star. Brenda Frye, a University of Arizona astronomer said, “It certainly sets the Guinness book of records for the most distant star ever.” She further said that it is yet not clear if it is part of the very first generation of stars.

Previously, the most distant star ever observed was called Icarus. Located about 9 billion light-years from Earth, it was discovered by Hubble in 2016 as part of a team of astronomers, including Dr Frye.

Hubble was able to spot the distant star with the help of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, in which light bending gravity from massive celestial objects functions as a magnifying lens.

This release of the image comes more than three decades after the Earth-orbiting observatory went into operation, as astronomers are shifting their focus to NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope. Webb reached the solar orbit perch 1 million miles from Earth in January and will begin scientific operations this summer.

A collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, Hubble has made greater than 1.5 million observations in the course of its almost 32 year lifetime. Orbiting approximately 340 miles above Earth's surface, the telescope has spotted supermassive black holes, merging galaxies and interstellar objects and helped find out moons around Pluto.