Earendel, a name from the world that J.R.R. Tolkien created in his novels such as The Lord of The Rings, means ‘morning star’ or ‘rising light’ in old English. In an engaging symbolism, astronomers have given this nickname to a newly spotted star that happens to be the most distant one to be seen until now. It is believed to be a whopping 12.9 billion light years away from us.
The finding, published in the journal Nature, was the result of careful observations over nearly four years, made possible by a phenomenon known as ‘gravitational lensing’.
Light from a star that is one light year away would take one year to reach us. Hence, the astronomers are seeing the star Earendel as it existed 12.9 billion years ago. If confirmed by further studies and by the James Webb Space Telescope, it would be the discovery of one of the earliest stars, formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. It may be made up of raw materials quite unlike those making up the stars that formed much later — say, our Sun, which is only 4.5 billion years old.
