Back in 2022, the Hubble space telescope appeared to have found the most distant star ever discovered . Named Earendel – morning or rising star in old English – a new paper suggests it might not be what we thought. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Earendel was spotted by Hubble due to a fortunate case of gravitational lensing, where light from a distant source has its path bent by a massive object in the foreground. In this case, light was bent around the star cluster WHL0137-08, allowing us to see Earendel an astonishing 28 billion light-years away (though it was closer to us when the light was emitted). According to analyses of these observations and subsequent observations from JWST , the light we see from Earende

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