They capture the farthest known star in the universe

space telescope James Webb glimpses The farthest known star in the universeIt was detected only a few months ago by Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

The star, named Earndel, after The character JRR Tolkien in The Silmarillion from The Lord of the Rings was initially discovered thanks to a gravitational lens in the deep field image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The star, whose light took 12.9 billion light years to reach Earth, It is so faint that it can be very difficult to find in the new telescope image Space James Webb, posted to Twitter on August 2 by a group of astronomers using the Cosmic Spring JWST account.

The original Hubble image provides guidance on where to look through the expanded crop. Mainly Earendel It is a small white dot below a group of distant galaxies. By comparing the Hubble image with the image taken by Webb, Earndel can be found.

“We are excited to share the first JWST photo of Arendelle, our universe’s most distant known star, Focused and amplified by a massive galactic massCosmic Spring astronomers wrote in a tweet, noting that the observations occurred on Saturday, July 30.

The tweet refers to gravitational inversion, an effect that takes advantage of the fact that extremely massive objects, such as galaxy clusters or supermassive black holes, deflect light from objects behind them.

When light passes through such an object, behaves as if passing through the lens of a telescopeIt increases, but it also distorts. Therefore, the use of gravitational lenses widens the range of telescopes, such as the Hubble and Webb, allowing them to see farther and in greater detail, according to a Space.com report.

Earendel, also known by its proper name WHL0137-LS, is located in the constellation Cetus.