A new view of a record-shattering distant star shows it to be twice as hot as our sun, and likely accompanied by a stellar companion
Astronomers have begun measuring of the most distant star ever detected, thanks to the powerful eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope .
Hubble was able to spot Earendel thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which the gravity of a massive foreground object sort of acts like a lens as it warps the very fabric of space and time, bending and brightening light from a more distant body as that light passes by. For example, JWST's NIRCam instrument "reveals the star to be a massive B-type star more than twice as hot as our sun, and about a million times more luminous," NASA officials wrote today in a statement announcing the new Earendel observations.
The existence of a companion would not be a surprise; most big stars like Earendel are part of binary systems, NASA officials noted.
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