Photo from open sources
Any massive cosmic body, be it a large planet, star or galaxy, changes due to its gravitational field of propagation of electromagnetic radiation – so the same as a conventional lens refracts light rays.
The other day, this effect allowed scientists working with automatic Hubble Orbital Observatory, get star shots, 9 billion light-years distant from Earth! Such a distance became a record for human observation of a single object, located in the depths of space.
The so-called gravitational lensing effect before allowed the Hubble telescope to photograph incredibly far from us objects. So, in April 2016, a picture of the galaxy was received Gn-Z11 in the constellation Ursa Major. This galaxy is located in 13.4 billion light-years from our blue ball, that is “only” 400 million light-years from where it was supposed to be Big Bang, as a result of which the Universe supposedly formed (one of the theories recognized by academic science, but not having unconditional evidence).
A photo from open sources
However, galaxies, supernovae and gamma-ray flares are much brighter than single shone. Typically, over 100 million light-years away ordinary stars can no longer be considered. However, with a star MACS J1149 LS1, which received the more harmonious name “Icarus”, scientists, I must say, just lucky. Alexey Filippenko, working in University of California at Berkeley, tells that he and his colleagues for the first time received detailed photos of the star, which existed in one of the first galaxies that appeared in The universe.
Star 9 billion light-years from the Solar System
Researchers have observed a cluster of galaxies called MACS J1149 in the constellation Leo. This cluster located at 5 billions of light years from Earth, shuts itself another major a cluster of galaxies, which became noticeable thanks to the ring of bright the light surrounding the MACS J1149. Analyzing the structure of this gravitationally bound galaxy system, American specialists unexpectedly noticed a strange object, significantly straying from the overall picture.
A photo from open sources
After analyzing the spectrum and calculating the dimensions of this object, astronomers realized that this is a star from the category of blue supergiants. It is located on the edge of the galaxy, which approximately 9 billion light-years distant from us. Experts suggest that the newly discovered celestial body is very bright and It has a temperature of 11-14 thousand degrees Celsius. So thus, Icarus is more than 2 times hotter than the Sun.
Icarus became visible to Hubble only after it shifted to the galaxy, and its light began to pass near another star, which increased its visible glow by almost 600 times. Star probably quite ordinary, but the most impressive thing about this news is how deeply astronomers learned to look into space. Maybe already in for the foreseeable future they will discover in the vastness of unlimited space intelligent life forms, which, in addition to our planet, are by all means must exist somewhere else …
Galaxy universe
