Not to be entirely outdone by the shiny new telescope settling in at L2, the veteran Hubble Space Telescope has just smashed its own record by discovering the most distant star ever seen, nicknamed Earendel (which means “morning star” in Old English).
NASA Press Release on Earendel.
We are seeing Earendel as it existed when the universe was only 900 million years old, a staggering 12.9 billion light-years away. Hubble was only able to spot it thanks to a rare, natural magnifying glass in space: a massive galaxy cluster sitting directly between us and the star, which warped and magnified its light due to gravitational lensing.
Earendel will undoubtedly be a prime target for JWST once it begins science operations.
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