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Space

The most distant individual star ever seen may actually be two stars

The James Webb Space Telescope has made new observations of Earendel, the most distant single star ever seen, and it seems like it has a cooler companion star

By Leah Crane

10 August 2023

The most distant star ever seen is within the Sunrise Arc

NASA, ESA, CSA, Dan Coe, Brian Welch, Zolt G. Levay

The most distant individual star ever seen, called Earendel, may not be a single individual star after all. Instead, it seems to be a pair – one extraordinarily bright, hot star and another cooler one that we can’t see directly.

The Hubble Space Telescope first spotted Earendel in 2022 using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. A massive galaxy cluster lies just between Earth and Earendel, and its gravity warps and magnifies the light of the star, making it…

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