This is a list of the most distant individually seen stars discovered.
Star | Redshift | Distance (Mpc) | Discovery | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
WHL0137-LS (Earendel) | 6.2±0.1 [1] | 8,600 | 2022 | The most distant known star as of 2023. [update] |
star-1 | 4.8 [2] | 7,830 | 2023 | |
star-2 | ||||
Unnamed blue supergiant | 2.65 [3] | 6,110 | 2022 | |
Godzilla | 2.38 [4] | 5,780 | 2022 | The most luminous known star. |
Quyllur | 2.1878 [5] | 5,540 | 2023 | First red supergiant at cosmological distances. |
Mothra | 2.091 [6] | 5,400 | 2023 | A binary consisting of a yellow supergiant and a B-type star. |
MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1 | 1.49 [7] | 4,410 | 2018 | The most distant known star prior to the discovery of Earendel. |
SDSS J1229+1122 | 0.000127 | 17 | 2013 |
In the fields of Big Bang theory and cosmology, reionization is the process that caused electrically neutral atoms in the universe to reionize after the lapse of the "dark ages".
The Lambda-CDM, Lambda cold dark matter, or ΛCDM model is a mathematical model of the Big Bang theory with three major components:
A sub-brown dwarf or planetary-mass brown dwarf is an astronomical object that formed in the same manner as stars and brown dwarfs but that has a planetary mass, therefore by definition below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium . Some researchers call them rogue planets whereas others call them planetary-mass brown dwarfs. They are sometimes categorized as Y spectral class brown dwarfs.
In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of walls of galactic superclusters. These massive, thread-like formations can commonly reach 50/h to 80/h Megaparsecs —with the largest found to date being the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at around 3 gigaparsecs (9.8 Gly) in length—and form the boundaries between voids. Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the individual clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies that make up galaxy filaments are moving away from each other at an accelerated rate; in the far future they will dissolve.
MACS0647-JD is a galaxy with a redshift of about z = 10.7, equivalent to a light travel distance of 13.26 billion light-years. If the distance estimate is correct, it formed about 427 million years after the Big Bang.
SN Refsdal is the first detected multiply-lensed supernova, visible within the field of the galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223. It was named after Norwegian astrophysicist Sjur Refsdal, who, in 1964, first proposed using time-delayed images from a lensed supernova to study the expansion of the universe. The observations were made using the Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC 4598 is a barred lenticular galaxy located in the constellation Virgo. NGC 4598 was discovered by astronomer William Herschel on April 15, 1784. The distance to NGC 4598 has not been accurately determined; measurements vary from 64 to 102 million light-years. According to the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, its redshift based distance is 102 Mly (31.3 Mpc) while its redshift independent based distance is 88.71 Mly (27.200 Mpc). Also, according to SIMBAD, its distance is 63.7 Mly (19.54 Mpc). NGC 4598's average distance is 84.8 Mly (26.0 Mpc). NGC 4598 is usually considered to be a member of the Virgo Cluster. However, P. Fouqu´e et al. suggests it may be a background galaxy independent of the main cluster.
A circumplanetary disk is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accumulation of matter composed of gas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids or collision fragments in orbit around a planet. They are reservoirs of material out of which moons may form. Such a disk can manifest itself in various ways.
DS Tucanae is a binary star system 144 light years away in the constellation of Tucana. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 8.5, and is a RS Canum Venaticorum variable. The system is notable for being young as a member of the 45 Myr old Tucana-Horologium moving group and for the primary star hosting the confirmed exoplanet DS Tucanae Ab, discovered by THYME, using TESS.
WHL0137-LS, also known as Earendel, is a star located in the constellation of Cetus. Discovered in 2022 by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is the earliest and most distant known star, at a comoving distance of 28 billion light-years. The previous furthest known star, MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1, also known as Icarus, at a comoving distance of 14.4 billion light-years, was discovered by Hubble in 2018. Stars like Earendel can be observed at cosmological distances thanks to the large magnification factors afforded by gravitational lensing, which can exceed 1000. Other stars have been observed through this technique, such as Godzilla.
Godzilla is a variable star in the Sunburst galaxy at redshift z = 2.37, observed through the gravitational lens PSZ1 G311.65-18.48. It was originally identified in the NW arc as a possible transient event in images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
The Sunburst galaxy is a strongly magnified galaxy at redshift z=2.38 behind the galaxy cluster PSZ1 G311.65-18.48. The cluster acts as a power magnifier thanks to the gravitational lensing effect. The galaxy cluster distorts the space around it creating different paths for the photons coming from the Sunburst galaxy. This lensing creates four arc segment roughly following a circle around the foreground lensing cluster. Chance alignments of the Sunburst Galaxy and galaxies in the lensing cluster breaks up some of the arc segments into multiple smaller images, creating a total of 12 full or partial images of the galaxy along the arc; some of these images are magnified by very large factors. In one of these strongly magnified images of the Sunburst galaxy, astronomers have identified the most luminous star known to date, Godzilla.
F200DB-045 is a candidate high-redshift galaxy, with an estimated redshift of approximately z = 20.4, corresponding to 168 million years after the Big Bang. If confirmed, it would be one of the earliest and most distant known galaxies observed.
UNCOVER-z13 is a high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during NIRCam imaging for the JWST Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization (UNCOVER) project on November 14, 2023. UNCOVER-z13 is within Abell 2744 supercluster in the constellation Sculptor.
UNCOVER-z12 is a high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during NIRCam imaging for the JWST Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization (UNCOVER) project in November 2023. UNCOVER-z12 is within the Abell 2744 supercluster in the constellation Sculptor. It is the 5th-most distant object ever discovered as of 2024, and is estimated to be 32.21 giga-lightyears from Earth.