Most distant star

The most distant individual star observed is WHL0137-LS (aka "Earendel"), which is located 12.9 billion light years from Earth. The star, which has a redshift of 6.2, was discovered by an international team of 29 researchers led by Brian Welch of Johns Hopkins University and Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Intstitute using data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope's RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) program. The discovery was published in Nature on 30 March 2022.

Earendel (a name that means "morning star" in Old English) was visible thanks to a phenomenon called "gravitational lensing".

As was predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, large concentrations of mass distort the space around them. An extremely large mass, such as a galaxy cluster, creates a gravitational field that bends light in a manner that is similar to an optical lens. This means that objects that are behind (from our perspective) such large concentrations of mass are magnified.

Just as with an optical lens, the power of the magnification varies depending on the alignment of the observed object, lens and observer. Earendel was discovered thanks to a fortuitous alignment of the star with a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08.

The brightness of Earendel is consistent with a star that has a mass roughly 50 times greater than the Sun. Astronomers are looking forward to a planned follow up observation by the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been approved to take a look at the star soon after its commissioning process has been completed.