1 00:00:00,229 --> 00:00:05,950 NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting 2 00:00:05,950 --> 00:00:10,530 the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe’s 3 00:00:10,530 --> 00:00:17,550 birth in the big bang—the farthest individual star ever seen to date. 4 00:00:17,550 --> 00:00:23,660 The newly detected star is 12.9 billion light years away, meaning that the light took 12.9 5 00:00:23,660 --> 00:00:25,720 billion years to reach Earth. 6 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:30,659 The previous record was 9 billion light years away. 7 00:00:30,659 --> 00:00:36,300 Normally at these distances, entire galaxies look like small, dim smudges with the light 8 00:00:36,300 --> 00:00:42,449 from millions of stars blending together, but the galaxy hosting this star was magnified 9 00:00:42,449 --> 00:00:47,830 and distorted by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that astronomers named the 10 00:00:47,830 --> 00:00:50,250 Sunrise Arc. 11 00:00:50,250 --> 00:00:55,320 Gravitational lensing occurs when a tremendous mass warps the fabric of space, creating a 12 00:00:55,320 --> 00:01:01,129 powerful natural magnifying glass that distorts and greatly amplifies the light from distant 13 00:01:01,129 --> 00:01:03,320 objects behind it. 14 00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:08,450 The combined mass of a foreground group of galaxies created the lens that allowed astronomers 15 00:01:08,450 --> 00:01:11,410 to see this distant star. 16 00:01:11,410 --> 00:01:15,870 After studying the galaxy in detail, they determined that one feature is an extremely 17 00:01:15,870 --> 00:01:23,000 magnified star that they called Earendel, which means “morning star” in Old English. 18 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:28,370 The research team estimates that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of our Sun and 19 00:01:28,370 --> 00:01:33,560 millions of times as bright, rivaling the most massive stars known. 20 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:38,740 Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the 21 00:01:38,740 --> 00:01:41,920 stars around us today. 22 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:46,130 Studying Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are unfamiliar 23 00:01:46,130 --> 00:01:49,030 with, but that led to everything we know today.