The star EARENDEL was discovered in March 2022
by the Hubble Space Telescope. But the properties of the star and its brightness
are now better revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The star lies in the
Sunrise Arc Galaxy.
The star is found to be twice as hot as the Sun
and about a million times brighter than it. It is located 12.9 billion light
years away from us and is the farthest star known to us. The Big Bang with
which our Universe originated occurred 13.9 billion years ago, so the star got
formed just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. A Light Year is equal to about
9.46 lac crore Km.
Actually when we see stars, we see through
time. We are now seeing EARENDEL as it was 12.9 billion years ago. However, as
the Universe is expanding the star would now be 28 billion light years away
from us.
Actually at such enormous distances like 12.9 billion light years, a single star, however bright it may be, would not be visible to our telescopes. However, Gravitational lensing and magnification by a massive Galaxy cluster known as WHL0137-08 which has thousands of Galaxies in it has made EARENDEL visible to us through both the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescopes.
To put it in perspective
our Galaxy the Milky Way is an average Galaxy and has 100,000 crore stars in
it. Hundreds or thousands of such Galaxies form a Galactic cluster.
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING: Extremely massive bodies bend the light from
the objects behind them. When light passes through such a body, it behaves as
though it is passing through the lenses of a telescope highly magnifying its brightness.
