NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image of the farthest known star in the universe, named Earendel, located about 28 billion light-years away from Earth. This is over 10 billion light-years farther than the most distant star previously observed by astronomers. At such vast distances, experts can usually only detect entire galaxies, but a fortunate coincidence allowed them to observe Earendel using the Hubble Space Telescope and then again with Webb on July 30.
By comparing the Hubble image with the one taken by NASA's new $10 billion space telescope, experts were able to locate Earendel as a faint red dot beneath a cluster of distant galaxies. The star, which took 12.9 billion years for its light to reach Earth, is described as so faint that it would be difficult to find without Hubble's assistance, which captured it in visible ultraviolet light compared to Webb's infrared imaging.
Experts noted that the star is visible because it aligns perfectly with the galaxy cluster, providing the maximum possible magnification. Dan Co, from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, remarked, "This is a really lucky alignment. No one has ever seen a star this large, let alone a galaxy." Since light takes time to travel, Webb's new image shows Earendel as it was approximately 900 million years after the Big Bang.
