What about second breakfast?
One image wasn't enough — we're eating up NASAWebb's second look at the star Earendel, first observed by NASAHubble. It's the farthest star ever detected, and Webb 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. And based on the colors of Earendel’s light, scientists think it might have a smaller companion.
We can see it thanks to a galaxy cluster so massive, its gravity warps the fabric of space. This bends the light coming from behind it and produces an effect similar to looking through a magnifying lens. It's a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
How far away is Earendel? The universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. We're seeing the star as it existed within one billion years of the big bang.
Download the full-resolution uncompressed version from the Space Telescope Science Institute:
webbtelescope.org/images
Image Descriptions:
1. A black backgr...