A NASA research team announced that the Hubble telescope has set a new record by capturing a picture of the most distant star discovered in the universe so far, located at a distance of about 13 billion light-years, a difference of 4 billion years compared to its predecessor, which issued this list in 2018.

The light year is a standard for measuring the distances between celestial bodies, and indicates the distance that light can travel in a year, which is equal to about 9.5 trillion kilometers.

The star was discovered based on data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope's RELICS (Reuters)

very special lens

According to the study, which the team published in the journal "Nature" on March 30, the discovery was made based on data collected by the "RELICS" program of the Hubble telescope led by Dan Koo, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute. In Baltimore, USA.

The researchers in this program are studying a phenomenon called the "gravitational lens", and to understand the idea, let's take a convex lens and look through it, we will see the objects in the background are slightly distorted, and more.

This happens because the light passes through the edges of the lens and is bent towards us in such a way that something in the background is magnified.

For cosmology, the same thing happens, as Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that the light ray is bent by the influence of the presence of galaxies and their groupings in space, and therefore what falls in their background appears to us magnified and distorted, just as it happens with the lens, so this phenomenon was called “lens.” gravity".

The gravitational lens has enlarged the galaxy containing the star to become in the form of a huge arc, the star appeared as a point on it (Reuters)

The morning star and the future of astronomy

In the case of the newly discovered star, which was named "Earendel", which means morning star in Old English, the gravitational lens has enlarged the galaxy containing it and distorted its shape, becoming in the form of a huge arc, the star appeared as one of the points on it.

According to the new study, the researchers estimated that the mass of Earndel is about 50 times the mass of the sun, making it one of the largest stars we know, with a luminosity of millions of times that of the sun.

But most of all, according to a statement issued by NASA, is that the composition of stars at such an early time in the history of the universe will undoubtedly be different from the composition of contemporary stars, and therefore the study of Erendl, and similar stars that are very far from us, is a golden opportunity To understand the evolution of stars, and consequently galaxies, over billions of years.

The composition of stars at such an early time in the history of the universe will undoubtedly be different from the composition of contemporary stars (Reuters)

In addition, the study of these stars gives scientists an opportunity to achieve a deeper understanding of the history of the universe around the moment of the Big Bang, as Erendel existed only about 800 million years after it, which is a short period by astronomical standards.

For these reasons, researchers hope that one of the tasks of new, larger and more accurate telescopes, such as James Webb, will be to study stars such as Erendel and collect more data on them.