The Hubble Space Telescope has detected light from a star that formed 1 billion years after the Big Bang, making it the most distant star ever observed and setting the stage for what the James Webb Space Telescope might soon discover.
The 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 — the most distant individual star ever seen. This sets up a major target for the James Webb Space Telescope in its first year.
Earendel was at least 50 times larger than our sun and millions of times brighter, according to findings. The star was discovered by astronomer Brian Welch, with Johns Hopkins University, in September 2020. Welch then did a lot of work convincing himself — and others — that it was indeed a single star, said Coe, a co-author on the paper. Coe led the Hubble observing programs that spotted Earendel.
Before Earendel’s discovery, the smallest objects seen when the universe was 1 billion years old were star clusters, which could have thousands of stars, embedded inside early galaxies. The most distant individual star previously observed by Hubble existed when the universe was about 4 billion years old.
Earendel is at an infrared wavelength that Hubble can see, Coe said, but “we’re really pushing Hubble to its limit.”
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