JWST has captured more detailed glimpse of Earendel.
The James Webb Space Telescope has recently recorded the most distant star ever identified in the cosmos. Discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, Earendel is the farthest star ever detected. It existed in the first billion years after the big bang. The James Webb Space Telescope now shows it to be a massive B-type star, more than twice as hot as our Sun and about a million times more luminous.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Earendel, is located in the Sunrise Arc galaxy and is detectable only due to the combined power of human technology and nature via an effect called gravitational lensing. Both Hubble and Webb were able to detect Earendel due to its lucky alignment behind a wrinkle in space-time created by the massive galaxy cluster WHL0137-08.
The galaxy cluster, located between us and Earendel, is so massive that it warps the fabric of space itself, which produces a magnifying effect, allowing astronomers to look through the cluster like a magnifying glass.
Webb is also able to see other details in Earendel's host galaxy, the Sunrise Arc, the most highly magnified galaxy yet detected in the universe's first billion years. It features both young star-forming regions and older, established star clusters as small as 10 light-years across, said the space agency in an Instagram post.
Due to its high sensitivity, the Webb telescope has also identified other stars that are considerably distant, although not as far away as Earendel. Astronomers hold a hopeful but cautious belief that it might still be possible to detect the initial generation of stars in the universe.