Using the NASA Hubble Space Telescope, scientists were able to find the farthest single star ever recorded, and they named it Erendel, which in Old English means “morning star” because it was at the dawn of the universe.
The researchers said that the mass of the blue star is very hot and that it is 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun, which is a million times brighter. Its light travels 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, meaning the star existed when the universe was only seven percent of its current age.
Scientists say Erendel appeared about 900 million years after the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe. It belonged to the first generation of stars before the universe was completely different from what it is today.
Prior to the discovery, a single star, Icarus, was recorded, according to Reuters, four billion years after Erendel.
Although scientists on Earth can now see Erendel’s light, that star is definitely no more, because they are bigger stars with relatively short lifespans. Erendel is believed to have lived a few hundred million years before dying in a massive eruption known as a supernova.
“Big stars usually live fast and die young,” Welch added.