Skip to main content

Hubble smashes record for most distant star ever seen

The Hubble Space Telescope has smashed a record, identifying its most distant star ever. The star is so far away that its light has taken nearly 13 billion years to reach us, meaning it is from the first one billion years after the Big Bang.

Hubble’s previous record for farthest star observed, set in 2018, was for a star from 4 billion years after the Big Bang. So this new finding is a considerable step older and was only observable thanks to a fortuitous cosmic alignment. “We almost didn’t believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most distant, highest redshift star,” said astronomer Brian Welch of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the paper, in a statement.

Tthe light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang (at a redshift of 6.2), captured by Hubble.
With this observation, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang (at a redshift of 6.2) — the most distant individual star ever seen. This sets up a major target for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope in its first year. NASA, ESA, B. Welch (JHU), D. Coe (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

The star in question, named Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English, is massive, coming in at at least 50 times the mass of our sun. It is also millions of times brighter. However, even allowing for its mass and brightness, it is so far away that it was only possible to observe it thanks to a huge galaxy cluster that passed between it and us. The cluster’s gravity is so large that it warps the light coming from the star and acts as a magnifying class.

Recommended Videos

“Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, the light from millions of stars blending together,” said Welch. “The galaxy hosting this star has been magnified and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that we named the Sunrise Arc.”

Observing this star is not only a neat record-breaker, but because it is so old, studying it can give clues about the composition of the early universe.

“Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the stars around us today,” Welch explained. “Studying Earendel will be a window onto an era of the Universe that we are unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know. It’s like we’ve been reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter, and now we will have a chance to see how it all got started.”

This research paves the way for further investigations of very distant, very ancient stars which will be possible once the James Webb Space Telescope begins science operations this summer.

“With Webb, we may see stars even more distant than Earendel, which would be incredibly exciting,” Welch said. “We’ll go as far back as we can. I would love to see Webb break Earendel’s distance record.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Hubble will switch to a new mode to preserve its troublesome gyros
An STS-125 crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis captured this image of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on May 19, 2009.

An STS-125 crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis captured this image of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on May 19, 2009. NASA

The beloved Hubble Space Telescope will soon be changing the way it operates by limiting the speed at which it can target new objects in order to preserve its lifespan for as long as possible.

Read more
James Webb discovers the most distant galaxy ever observed
JADES (NIRCam Image with Pullout). The NIRCam data was used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout), was determined to be at a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record-holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the big bang.

JADES (NIRCam Image with Pullout). The NIRCam data was used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout), was determined to be at a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record-holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the big bang. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA). NASA

Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered the most distant known galaxy to date, one that is so far away that it existed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Since Webb began its science operations in 2022, astronomers have used it to look for very distant, very ancient galaxies and have been surprised by what they found. Not only have they found many of these distant galaxies, but the galaxies are also brighter and more massive than they expected -- suggesting that galaxies evolved into large sizes faster than anyone imagined.

Read more
This might be the most ridiculous GPU I’ve ever seen
The MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim Fuzion graphics card.

MSI just revealed what might just be the most ridiculous graphics card we've seen to date, and it snagged the Best Choice Award at Computex 2024. MSI's GeForce RTX 4090 24G Suprim Fuzion is an enormous GPU, and although it's equipped with just two fans -- a rarity for an RTX 4090 -- it may have the best cooling solution in MSI's arsenal, all thanks to the built-in all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler. Don't see any external radiator? That's because there isn't one. All the tubing and the radiator are tucked away inside the shroud of this massive beast. But how much will that really help?

It's safe to say that MSI went a little extra when it designed this GPU. With an integrated radiator inside the shroud, it looks quite unassuming at a glance, but don't be fooled -- this is a 4.5-slot behemoth that probably weighs a ton. MSI got rid of every single external tube and concealed the entire AIO cooler within the shroud, making the pipes 90% shorter than in traditional designs.

Read more