The words "twinkle, twinkle, little star" may put a baby to sleep, but they aren't precisely
accurate outside of Earth's atmosphere. A correct version would be, "emit, emit,
giant balls of gas". Not so catchy, right?
Stars, the dazzling beacons of light that come alive when the sky darkens,
have always piqued our interest. They've been worshipped as gods, used to measure the passage
of time, and as a means of navigating the planet. But do we posses enough knowledge about them?
We have been able to observe and study millions of stars thanks to our advanced telescopes.
They have enlightened us about the universe's deepest secrets.
NASA's, Hubble space telescope has obtained photographs of the most distant
star ever observed, which appears to provide a fascinating view into the primordial cosmos.
It has set a new benchmark by detecting this distant star.
This star is believed to have existed within the first billion years, after the Big Bang.
Astronomers have named it, Earandel. An Old English name, which means, "morning star".
Earendel's light has travelled an estimated 12.9 billion years to reach Earth,
a considerable leap over the previous most distant star, which was nine billion years old.
Because of an unusual cosmic alignment, the observations were feasible,
and Earendel may be the only solitary star from this time that we will ever observe.
Studying Earendel will provide a window into a hitherto unknown era of the universe.
This is a ground breaking discovery that opens up a whole new field of research, by allowing
huge stars to be directly observed when the cosmos was young and star formation was just beginning.
It is thought to be at least 50 times the mass of the Sun and millions of times as bright, making it
one of the most massive stars ever discovered. A dazzling star like this would typically be
undetectable. Even the whole galaxy is simply a speck of light at such great distances.
Astronomers will be able to quantify the star's brightness and temperature,
as well as gain insight into the makeup of the first generation of stars,
according to the scheduled observations. These stars evolved before the universe was filled
with the heavy elements created by successive generations of big stars, and they are the
forerunners of the stars we see now in the sky. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST),
which launched in December 2021, and is now preparing for science operations,
should be able to determine, whether Earendel is a single star system rather or
a cluster of star systems. Its optics, are superior to Hubble's and far more advanced.
Both these magnificent telescopes, are expected to work together and bombard us
with loads of new information about the cosmos. Examining Earendel, will provide a glimpse into
a time in the cosmos that we are unfamiliar with. It's like, we've been reading a fascinating novel,
but we've started from the second chapter, and now we'll get to see how it all began.
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