![]() Called MACS J1149+2223, this cluster (left) sits between Earth and the galaxy that contains the distant star. Icarus is only visible because it is being magnified by the gravity of a massive galaxy cluster located about 5 billion light-years from Earth. We see Icarus in the deep past, 9 billion years ago, when it was just a young thing. Since blue supergiants are massive, hot stars with much shorter lifetimes compared to smaller, cooler stars like the sun, the star is long gone, having ended its life billions of years ago as a supernova. Icarus appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30 percent of its current age. The powerful gravity exerted by the cluster acted as a "lens" to magnify its light and lift the star from the shadows. A massive foreground galaxy cluster happens to lie in the same line of sight. Nicknamed Icarus, it's a massive blue supergiant but so faint that even the biggest telescopes would never have detected it were it not for a lucky accident. ![]() We've got a new distance record! Hubble has gazed across 9 billion light years and spotted the most distant star ever seen. It lies more than halfway across the visible universe. In addition, in 2020 NASA will launch Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, a more powerful observatory that will find other distant stars like this one."Icarus," located in a remote galaxy in Leo, is the most distant star yet seen. Kelly said they’ll use the information to understand Icarus and gain a rare and detailed look into its evolution. “As more objects move in front of (Icarus), we will be able to take a census of everything in the cluster.” Since the light from Icarus is 9 billion years old, Kelly said the star by now has likely been dead for billions of years. Hubble telescope breaks record, measures most distant galaxy ever seen Without gravitational lensing, the star would’ve been impossible to see, even with a powerful telescope, he said. “Being able to see one star at a time is helpful,” Kelly said. The cluster of galaxies act as a natural lens in space, bending and amplifying light while illuminating Icarus. The mass in this case was a galaxy cluster about 5 billion light years from Earth, between our planet and Icarus. Simply put, gravitational lensing is the concept that mass bends light. The light turned out to be an individual star that only became visible with the help of gravitational lensing. ![]() There are 10 times more galaxies in our universe than we'd estimated ![]() Two years later, they were observing the cluster when they noticed a new point of light had appeared. Observers are seeing the star as it looked when the universe was about 30% of its current age.ĭiscovery of the star began in 2014 when astronomers were using Hubble to study a galaxy cluster. The Icarus visible to us now is a very young star, Kelly said. Kelly said its nickname stuck because the star will appear to grow brighter and then eventually disappear like Icarus’ waxed and feathered wings, which fell off when he got too close to the sun. “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.”Īccording to a report published by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble, the star is so far away its light has taken 9 billion years to reach Earth. “This is the first time we’re seeing a magnified, individual star,” Kelly said in a statement. The inset panels at right show the view in 2011, before Icarus was visible, compared with the star's brightening in 2016. Icarus is only visible because it is being magnified by the gravity of a massive galaxy cluster.
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