NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to be under the spotlight after it just took a peek at the farthest Star in the Universe. The Earendel star is the space object in question. Or, if you want to sound more scientific, you can also call it WHL0137-LS.
According to space.com, James Webb spotted the star while its ‘older sibling,’ the Hubble Space Telescope, first discovered it. Earendel is located 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cetus.
We’re excited to share the first JWST image of Earendel, the most distant star known in our universe, lensed and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster. It was observed Saturday by JWST program 2282. pic.twitter.com/YoZZKRsdzf
— Cosmic Spring JWST (@CosmicSprngJWST) August 2, 2022
Just about a few weeks ago, the James Webb Space Telescope revealed its first set of full-color images of the Universe. The telescope already has incredible progress.
However, considering that NASA built James Webb in order to make it capable of studying the very first stars that illuminated the Cosmos, it shouldn’t come as a surprise the spotting of Earendel.
The Space Telescope Institute in Maryland said the following, as space.com quotes:
JWST was designed to study the first stars. Until recently, we assumed that meant populations of stars within the first galaxies,
But in the past three years, three individual strongly lensed stars have been discovered. This offers a new hope of directly observing individual stars at cosmological distances with JWST.
Earendel’s discovery, thanks to Hubble, was reported back in late March. Gravitational lensing caused by a galaxy cluster being positioned between it and Earth and amplifying the star’s light made possible the discovery of the Earendel star.
One of the space objects revealed by James Webb on July 12, within the first full-color images of the Cosmos, is the Southern Ring Nebula. You are free to watch a recent video showing how James Webb is zooming towards the nebula.
The Cetus constellation, where the Earendel star is located, was named after a sea monster in Greek mythology that Perseus and Heracles needed to kill.
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