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Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI
The most distant star, ever discovered, may have been wrongly classified: instead of being a star, the object – nickname Earendel from the old English word for “Morning Star” – may be a star cluster, a group of stars that are connected by gravity and formed by the same cloud of gas and dust.
Detected by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2022, it was thought that Erandel was a star that formed only 900 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 7% of its present age.
Now, in a study published on July 31 at The astrophysical magazineAstronomers used Space Telescope James Web (Jwst) To look at a new look at Earendel. They wanted to explore the possibility of Earendel not to be a star or binary system, as it was previously thought, but rather a compact star cluster.
They found that the spectral characteristics of Earendel correspond to those of ball clusters – a type of star cluster – discovered in the local universe.
“What is soothing in this work is that if Eaerendel is really a star cluster, it’s not unexpected!” Masimo PascaleDoctoral student in astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the study, Live Science told an email. “[This] The job finds that Earendel seems quite compatible with how we expect ball clusters we see in the local universe would seem in the first billions of years of the universe. “
Ancient object
Earendel, located in the Sunrise Arc Galaxy 12.9 billion light -years from us, was discovered by a phenomenon known as a gravitational lenses, a phenomenon provided by Einstein’s theory of the common relativity in which massive objects bend the light that runs past them. A massive galactic cluster located between the Earth and Erdel is so large that it distorts the tissue of space-time, creating an increasing effect that allows astronomers to observe the light of Earendel, which would otherwise be too faint to detect. Studies show that the star appears at least 4000 times larger due to this gravitational lens effect.
This magnifier is the strongest in some special regions. If a star or galaxy is up to one of these regions, its image can be increased hundreds or thousands of times more than normal. Earendel seems to be sitting extremely close to one of these “sweet places”, which is why we can see it, although it is almost 12.9 billion light -years. Such almost perfect levels are incredibly rare, which made astronomers consider alternative explanations outside one star.
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After Eardenel’s discovery in 2022.Researchers analyzed the site using data from the close infrared image of JWST (NIRCAM). Looking at its brightness and size, they ended This Earendel can be a massive star more than twice as hot as the sun and approximately a million times as much as our star. In the color of Earendel, astronomers also found a hint of the presence of a cool companion star.
“After some recent work showed that Earendel could really (but not necessarily) be much more greedy than it was thought before, I was convinced that it was worth exploring the script of a star cluster,” Pascale said.
Using spectroscopic data from JWST’s NIRST, Pascale’s NIRSPEC instruments and the team examine the age and metal content of Earendel.
The team looked at the spectroscopic continuum of Earendel, which generally shows how its brightness changes smoothly at different wavelengths of light. This model corresponds to what would be expected from a star cluster and the less corresponds to the combined light of multiple stars.
“The new part of this study is the NIRSPEC spectrum, which provides a little more details than it was possible with NIRCAM data,” said Brian WelchPhD at the University of Maryland and the NASA Space Center of Godard, who runs the team that opened Earendel in 2022 but does not participate in the new study.
But Welch does not think the new data is enough to confirm that Earendel is a star cluster.
“In the NIRSSPEC spectral resolution [instrument]A lens and star cluster star can be very similar. It is therefore important to take into account all the available data when trying to classify these highly enlarged objects, “Welch told Live Science in an email.
Researchers have only explored the possibility of Star Cluster. They did not explore all possible scenarios, with Earendel being a star or a multinvings and comparing the results.
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“The measurement is stable and well done, but only given the hypothesis of the star cluster, the study is limited in the range,” Welch noted.
Both Pascal and Welch agreed that the key to solving the mystery of Earendel was to monitor the effects of microencing. Micalencing is a subtype of a gravitational lens in which the passing object temporarily distorts the image of a distant object when a closer object is arranged in front of it as it passes by it. Changes in brightness due to microenage are more noticeable when distant objects are small – such as stars, planets or star systems – and not much larger star clusters.
“It will be exciting to see what Jwst’s future programs can do to demistify the nature of Earendel,” Pascal said.