Most Distant Star Ever Seen Is 9 Billion Light-Years Away

[Judi Lynn]

By Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor | April 3, 2018 11:48am ET

Astronomers have observed a star that's so far away, its light took 9 billion years to reach us here on Earth — about 4.5 billion years before our solar system even existed.

And while scientists have peered at even more distant galaxies, which are visible due to light from their billions of stars, this helium-burning orb, nicknamed Icarus, is the most distant ordinary individual star an Earthling has observed, according to a statement from the University of California, Berkeley. (An ordinary, or main-sequence, star is one that is still fusing hydrogen to create helium; about 90 percent of the stars in the universe fit this bill, including the sun.)

"You can see individual galaxies out there, but this star is at least 100 times farther away than the next individual star we can study, except for supernova explosions," Patrick Kelly, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholar who is now at the University of Minnesota, said, referring to the explosive and superbright deaths of massive stars.

So, how'd they achieve the stellar feat? The astronomers from UC Berkeley used a method called gravitational lensing, which is based on the idea that a massive object bends the fabric of space-time itself, and the more massive the object — think a sumo wrestler on a squishy mat — the bigger that curvature. Going with that sumo-wrestler analogy, the resulting dent in the mat affects the paths of other "things" that make their way over it. Light beams, for instance, that pass over the curved space-time (or the dented mat) will be bent in particular ways. Turns out, astronomers can see the resulting distorted image from such gravitational lensing, and that image is magnified. [8 Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life]

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[still_one]

1. Gee, that is more than 5000 years......................................

[angstlessk]

2. Is the star still there?

Or did 9 billion years change it?

Are we seeing it as it it is or how it was 9 billion years ago?

They talk about bending space...they are bending my mind!

[byronius]

3. We have no idea.

But I read Laurence Krauss's book where he talks about the acceleration of universe expansion -- eventually, it will become impossible to see anything but nearby stars. Talk about mind bending.

[defacto7]

4. We see it as it was because light only goes so fast

The light we see was generated 9 billion years ago. The star could still be there or it could be long gone. Most likely the latter.