Hubble spots farthest star ever seen

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In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers announced the discovery of the most distant star ever observed. The team detected the blue supergiant star — which shone when the universe was just one-third its current age — with the help of both the Hubble Space Telescope and an observational phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

“This is the first time we’re seeing a magnified, individual star,” said Patrick Kelly, an astrophysicist of the University of Minnesota and lead author of the new study, in a press release. “You can see individual galaxies out there, but this star is at least 100 times farther away than the next individual star we can study, except for supernova explosions.” The unique discovery not only provides astronomers with insight into the formation and evolution of stars in the early universe, but also the composition of galaxy clusters, and even the very nature of dark matter itself.

The light from the record-breaking star, which the team has since nicknamed Icarus, was emitted just 4.4 billion years after the Big Bang. Although the star was undoubtedly bright, being located at such a great distance away would have typically made it impossible to view, even with our most powerful telescopes. Fortunately, “the star became bright enough to be visible for Hubble thanks to a process called gravitational lensing,” said co-author Jose Diego, an astronomer from the Instituto de Física de Cantabria, in a press release.