A single star visible from 12.9 billion light-years away

Space · Published 22 October 2026 · Updated 22 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Most objects at this distance appear as blurry smudges of millions of stars blended together. Yet, astronomers have identified a lone point of light: Earendel. It is the farthest individual star ever seen, offering a glimpse into a universe that existed when it was only 7 percent of its current age.

The discovery of Earendel represents a significant leap in observational astronomy. Located in the Cetus constellation within the Sunrise Arc Galaxy, this star is so distant that its light has traveled for approximately 12.9 billion years to reach Earth. This places its existence within the first billion years after the Big Bang, at a redshift of 6.2. To put this in perspective, the previous record-holder, a blue star nicknamed "Icarus," was detected by Hubble in 2018 and existed when the universe was about 30 percent of its current age (redshift 1.5).

Seeing Earendel is only possible due to a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The Sunrise Arc Galaxy sits along a ripple in spacetime that acts like a natural magnifying glass, distorting and enlarging the light from objects behind it. This effect allowed astronomers to distinguish Earendel as an individual star rather than part of a blended cluster. Due to this intense amplification, the star becomes visible rather than staying concealed inside its host galaxy, which looks like a crimson streak in the heavens.

The designation of this celestial body holds cultural significance; Michelle Thaller, an astronomer at NASA, verified that it deliberately references J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. In Tolkien's works, Eärendil is a character who travels the sky with a radiant jewel. The name itself originates from an Old English poem where it translates to "morning star" or "rising light." This find was documented in the journal Nature on March 30, highlighting a milestone for both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.

While Earendel holds the distance record for an individual star, it is distinct from "Methuselah," which is the oldest known star discovered by Hubble in 2013. The distinction is important: Methuselah is defined by its age, while Earendel is defined by its distance from our current vantage point.

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