Scientists Discover a Single blue supergiant star 9 billion light years away ... by Chance

In a scientific first scientists have imaged a single Star a mindboggling 9 billion light years away.


The discovery came as a team of astronomers were using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a Supernova in a Galaxy cluster 5 billion light-years from Earth , they discovered a point of light in the image that wasn't there in previous images which on further investigation turned out to be a single blue supergiant star that had been made visible by gravitational lensing and was located in a Galaxy behind the Galaxy they were observing , further observations showed the light brightened over the following month indicating the existence of a second gravitational lens , possibly a Star in the galaxy they were observing.

This is the first time we have imaged a single Star at such a distance.

"For the first time ever we're seeing an individual normal star -- not a supernova, not a gamma ray burst, but a single stable star -- at a distance of nine billion light years," said Alex Filippenko, a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and one of many co-authors of the report. "These lenses are amazing cosmic telescopes."

Kelly saw a second star in the Hubble image, which could either be a mirror image of Icarus, or a different star being gravitationally lensed. "There are alignments like this all over the place as background stars or stars in lensing galaxies move around, offering the possibility of studying very distant stars dating from the early universe, just as we have been using gravitational lensing to study distant galaxies," Filippenko said. "For this type of research, nature has provided us with a larger telescope than we can possibly build!"
news.berkeley.edu...

Who needs James Webb when Nature's on your side.

The James Webb will bring discoveries in space to a whole new level..

We may not 'need' it.. But boy do we want it..

a reply to: gortex

I am of the camp, having both Hubble AND James Webb is pretty awesome.

Yeah, Hubble is getting old but Good Gravy! 9 Billion LY's away?!?!? That is doing pretty well in your old age

a reply to: Misterlondon

Agreed , my comment was out of frustration at the latest delay.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so blue if it weren’t alone and everybody stopped commenting on its size...

originally posted by: Misterlondon
The James Webb will bring discoveries in space to a whole new level..

We may not 'need' it.. But boy do we want it..

Yeah. Now I have to stay alive until 2020. Gah! Tired of waiting.

a reply to: gortex

We found heaven a lil' bit ago, astrologists & whoreologists saw this in the pyramidal ages & before. It's nothing new.

Well, any star is easy to see with a flat universe... when ya squint.

But seriously, is this cool or what? And the "or what" crowd can go back to chewin' cud.

The vastness ... the vastness.

long ago in human years...I found better eyesight was achievable by squinting my eyes to mere slits where the eye-lashes obscured the light But through those tiny slits a tiny & miniscule object which was once fuzzy...
Then became clearer & sharper on the eyeballs rods/cones optic sensors & the brain's ability to magnify & interpret that flood of data into something useful

so... you can see more by squinting

Blue Kachina , baby