Every year our technology gets better and with that the more we find and figure out about space. Space is a never-ending abyss, and we have only looked at a small portion of it. Recently The Hubble Telescope was able to pick up the light from a star 12.9 billion light years away. This means that the star would have been alive since the universe was only 7% of its current age. It was able to be found by the redshift method (the wavelength of the light is stretched, so the light is seen as 'shifted' towards the red part of the spectrum). This star was much further than any other star ever found. Brian Welch, of John Hopkins University, says, “We almost didn't believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most-distant, highest redshift star.”

Scientists are astonished at this discovery and are a little bit confused about why we found this star at this distance. Usually, at this distance, entire galaxies appear as very small smudges. The galaxy this star was found in is being analyzed, and we named the crescent that it lies in the “Sunrise Arc”. The star that was found was given the name “Earendel” which means “morning star” in older English. This star is very important and might be able to show new information about early star formation. Astronomers think that because of the age of the star, it may not be composed of the same materials that we see in stars today.

Earendel is 50 times the mass of our sun, which is astronomically large, and on top of that, it is millions of times brighter than the sun. The only reason that this star was able to be seen is because of the natural magnification of a giant galaxy cluster. This galaxy cluster was named WHL0137-08, and it sits directly in between our galaxy and Earendel. This galaxy is able to amplify the light behind it which creates a very powerful magnification. The star Earendel appears close to or on top of a ripple in the fabric of space. This is why Earendel appears much more visible than the other objects in its galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most popular telescopes for discoveries in space, and space research. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. Hubble was launched in April of 1990, and has changed the world since then. The Hubble telescope is unique, because unlike the telescopes on earth Hubble is in space orbiting earth. This gives Hubble better pictures and clearer images over the telescopes on earth because the atmosphere alters and blocks light.

The Hubble Telescope was one of our greatest creations and has taught us so much about the universe. Every year it discovers more and more distant stars and galaxies. And it has now discovered the oldest and most distant star ever.