Scientists Learn More About the History of Stars in Latest Webb Telescope Images

The world was gobsmacked last month when the James Webb Space Telescope released its first clutch of images, showing nebulae, galactic clusters, binary stars, and more. Things have quieted down a bit since, as the telescope team begins to set about the 25 or so years of work the Webb is thought to have ahead of it. But, as Space.com reports, the telescope made news again this week, when astronomers announced that it had spotted the farthest individual star ever seen. Named Earendel, after a character in Lord of the Rings, the star is located 12.9 billion light years from Earth, which means that Webb saw it as it looked 12.9 billion years ago, not as it looks today. The star would not have been visible at all if it weren’t for the phenomenon of gravitational lensing—the ability of large foreground objects like galaxies to bend and magnify the light streaming in from behind them. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Nobody’s ever seen a star this highly magnified, not to mention a galaxy,” Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, part of the team that made the new measurements, told New Scientist. NASA/ESA/CSA/STScIA cluster of galaxies including Earendel, the most distant star known in the universe, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope Though sighting Earendel was an accomplishment, Webb does not get credit for discovering it. That distinction goes to its much older brother, the Hubble Space Telescope, which fi...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news