Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!
They found him! They found Eärendil!
The most distant star ever seen has been captured by the Hubble space telescope in images that appear to give a remarkable glimpse into the ancient universe.
Light from the star, named Earendel, has travelled an estimated 12.9bn years to reach the Earth – a huge leap from the previous most distant star, which dates to nine billion years. The observations were possible thanks to a rare cosmic alignment, meaning that Earendel may be the only individual star from this epoch that we will ever see.
Scientists estimate that Earendel, whose name means “morning star” in Old English, is at least 50 times the mass of the Sun and millions of times as bright, placing it among the most massive stars known. But even such a brilliant star would not normally be detectable. At such vast distances, even an entire galaxy is just a smudge of light.
It was only thanks to natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08, which sits between us and Earendel, that astronomers were able to make the detection. The cluster’s gravitational pull is so intense that light bends around it, creating a powerful cosmic magnifying glass that amplifies light from distant objects lying behind it.
THIS IS SO AMAZING! And I love that they named the star Earendel! In 1914, Tolkien wrote a poem called “The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star”, which Christopher Tolkien considered to be “the first of the mythology.” The poem had in turn been inspired by two lines from Cynewulf:
Éalá Éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended.
Hail Éarendel, brightest of angels,
above Middle-earth sent unto Men.
It gives me chills to imagine how a poem that Tolkien wrote all the way back in 1914 was the beginning of the mythology he would spend his whole life creating, and Éarendel would become Eärendil the Mariner in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion! And this poem was also the origin behind Frodo’s cry in Shelob’s Lair,
Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!
Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!
AND NOW WE GET TO SEE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Surely that is a Silmaril that shines now in the West?
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