Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

James Webb captures image of the most distant star ever discovered

Georgina Torbet
By

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the most distant star ever discovered. Discovered by Hubble in 2020, the star named Earendel is located an astonishing 28 billion light-years away. While in the previous Hubble image, the star was only visible as a small blob, these new observations from Webb are detailed enough to reveal information about the star like its type and information about the galaxy in which it resides.

The Webb image shows a galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08, which is so massive that it bends spacetime and acts like a magnifying glass for the more distant galaxies behind it. Some of these distant galaxies being magnified include one called the Sunrise Arc, which hosts Earendel. The Sunrise Arc is located near the end of one of the spikes from the bright central star, at around the five o’clock position. A zoomed-in version of the image shows the Arc and Earendel within t.

This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08 contains the most strongly magnified galaxy known in the universe’s first billion years: the Sunrise Arc, and within that galaxy, the most distant star ever detected. The star, nicknamed Earendel, was first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope. Follow-up observations using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) 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.
This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope of a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08 contains the most strongly magnified galaxy known in the universe’s first billion years: the Sunrise Arc, and within that galaxy, the most distant star ever detected. The star, nicknamed Earendel, was first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope. Follow-up observations using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) reveal the star to be a massive B-type star more than twice as hot as our Sun, and about a million times more luminous. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA; Science: Dan Coe (STScI/AURA for ESA, JHU), Brian Welch (NASA-GSFC, UMD); Image Processing: Zolt G. Levay

Due to this magnification effect, called gravitational lensing, Earendel is magnified by an amazing factor of 4,000. As the star is so distant, we are seeing it as it was an extremely long time ago due to the amount of time it takes light to travel the great distance. The star is thought to be from 1 billion years after the big bang, so studying it can help us learn about some of the early stars.

Recommended Videos

One surprise to the researchers is that there are indications that Earendel may have a companion star, cooler and redder than it is, although it’s hard to be sure because the light from the possibly two stars blurs together. But scientists can tell some information about Earendel with more certainty, such as that it is a type called a massive B-type star, and that it is more than twice as hot as our sun and around a million times more luminous.

Related

The data was collected using Webb’s NIRCam camera instrument, but the researchers took observations of the region using Webb’s NIRSpec spectroscopy instrument as well. They are now analyzing these data too and hope to learn about the host galaxy’s composition and more exact figures for its distance from Earth.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
James Webb spots tiniest known brown dwarf in stunning star cluster
The central portion of the star cluster IC 348. Astronomers combed the cluster in search of tiny, free-floating brown dwarfs.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning view of a star cluster that contains some of the smallest brown dwarfs ever identified. A brown dwarf, also sometimes known as a failed star, is an object halfway between a star and a planet -- too big to be a planet but not large enough to sustain the nuclear fusion that defines a star.

It may sound surprising, but the definition of when something stops being a planet and starts being a star is, in fact, a little unclear. Brown dwarfs differ from planets in that they form like stars do, collapsing due to gravity, but they don't sustain fusion, and their size can be comparable to large planets. Researchers study brown dwarfs to learn about what makes the difference between these two classes of objects.

Read more
James Webb provides a second view of an exploded star
A new high-definition image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) unveils intricate details of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), and shows the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded. The most noticeable colors in Webb’s newest image are clumps of bright orange and light pink that make up the inner shell of the supernova remnant. These tiny knots of gas, comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself, are only detectable by NIRCam’s exquisite resolution, and give researchers a hint at how the dying star shattered like glass when it exploded.

When massive stars run out of fuel and come to the ends of their lives, their final phase can be a massive explosion called a supernova. Although the bright flash of light from these events quickly fades, other effects are longer-lasting. As the shockwaves from these explosions travel out into space and interact with nearby dust and gas, they can sculpt beautiful objects called supernova remnants.

One such supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was recently imaged using the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument. Located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, it is thought to be a star that exploded 340 years ago (as seen from Earth) and it is now one of the brightest radio objects in the sky. This view shows the shell of material thrown out by the explosion interacting with the gas that the massive star gave off in its last phases of life.

Read more
James Webb telescope captures a dramatic image of newborn star
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars. This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

A new image of a Herbig-Haro object captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the dramatic outflows from a young star. These luminous flares are created when stellar winds shoot off in opposite directions from newborn stars, as the jets of gas slam into nearby dust and gas at tremendous speed. These objects can be huge, up to several light-years across, and they glow brightly in the infrared wavelengths in which James Webb operates.

This image shows Herbig-Haro object HH 797, which is located close to the IC 348 star cluster, and is also nearby to another Herbig-Haro object that Webb captured recently: HH 211.

Read more