48-Hubble’s Inside The Image: Earendel

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has followed up on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe, within the first billion years after the big bang.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken over 1.5 million observations over the years. One of them is the breathtaking image of the star known as Earendel.

The star is positioned along a ripple in spacetime that gives it extreme magnification, allowing it to emerge into view from its host galaxy, which appears as a red smear across the sky.

With this observation, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the Universe’s birth in the Big Bang (at a redshift of 6.2) — the most distant individual star ever seen.

In this video, Dr. Brian Welch explains this fascinating phenomenon of nature, and goes over how important Hubble is to exploring the mysteries of the universe.