1
00:00:05,505 --> 00:00:05,772
Yeah.

2
00:00:05,772 --> 00:00:09,476
So we found an individual star,
which is the most distant

3
00:00:09,476 --> 00:00:12,512
individual star
that has been found thus far.

4
00:00:13,580 --> 00:00:16,316
So normally
when we look at very distant objects,

5
00:00:16,316 --> 00:00:19,419
what we're seeing
is the light from an entire galaxy.

6
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So millions of stars all blended together,

7
00:00:22,622 --> 00:00:25,892
and we've been able to see those out
to even farther distances.

8
00:00:25,892 --> 00:00:31,831
But in this case, thanks to a very massive
cluster of galaxies in the foreground,

9
00:00:32,499 --> 00:00:37,203
the light from this one star
has just been very, very highly magnified.

10
00:00:37,837 --> 00:00:40,140
So we're able to see this single star

11
00:00:41,141 --> 00:00:43,309
at a much greater distance.

12
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So it's when the universe was less
than 1 billion years old.

13
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So we're looking nearly 13 billion years
into the past

14
00:00:50,216 --> 00:00:52,419
when we look at this object

15
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Yeah.

16
00:00:56,456 --> 00:00:59,325
So it's thanks to two things, really.

17
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So we have, first of all, the incredible
power of the Hubble Space Telescope

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that's something that you really need
to be able to see something like this

19
00:01:06,066 --> 00:01:10,437
and then combine that
with an additional telescope in space.

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So through something
called gravitation lensing,

21
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a very massive

22
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cluster of galaxies actually bends
the light from the background object.

23
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And in doing so,
just like looking through a glass lens,

24
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it focuses the light onto our telescope.

25
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And in this case,
we get just the right alignment

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with the lens
and with the star in the background

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that we get really,
really high magnifications.

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So in this case, it's
magnified by a factor of thousands.

29
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Whereas typically, you know,
if you have a lensed galaxy,

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it would be magnified by a factor
of a few to perhaps ten.

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So in this case, we just got really lucky
with the alignment.

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So we can really see very small details

33
00:01:54,681 --> 00:01:56,883
in this background object

34
00:02:00,353 --> 00:02:04,390
I think the most interesting thing
is that it's looking back to a time

35
00:02:04,390 --> 00:02:08,094
when the universe was much different
than what it is today. So

36
00:02:09,462 --> 00:02:10,530
what we've seen of

37
00:02:10,530 --> 00:02:14,667
galaxies at this early time, we can tell
that they're structured very differently

38
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and that they look quite a bit different
than galaxies that we see nearby.

39
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For example, the Milky Way
and our nearest neighbor, Andromeda,

40
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So it stands to reason that stars

41
00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:29,983
at such a great distance
will look a little bit different, too.

42
00:02:29,983 --> 00:02:34,454
And we just haven't had the opportunity
to really study one in detail yet.

43
00:02:34,454 --> 00:02:38,591
So I think what I'm most interested in
and what I'm most excited by is the fact

44
00:02:38,591 --> 00:02:42,896
that we now have an opportunity
to really pinpoint one object

45
00:02:42,896 --> 00:02:45,698
and look at it in detail.

46
00:02:48,535 --> 00:02:51,271
Yeah,
Hubble and Webb are very complementary.

47
00:02:51,838 --> 00:02:54,841
So Hubble obviously gets the shorter
wavelengths of light,

48
00:02:54,841 --> 00:02:57,777
and Webb is able to target longer
wavelengths.

49
00:02:58,444 --> 00:03:01,648
So when you combine those,
you get a much broader understanding of

50
00:03:01,648 --> 00:03:02,882
whatever objects we're looking at.

51
00:03:03,816 --> 00:03:05,685
In my case as well,

52
00:03:05,685 --> 00:03:11,157
my group has both Hubble and Webb
observations scheduled at the same time.

53
00:03:11,157 --> 00:03:13,726
So we're going to be able to get

54
00:03:13,860 --> 00:03:16,362
Hubble observations of this lensed star

55
00:03:16,362 --> 00:03:21,534
and Webb observations over a similar time
period within the next year or so.

56
00:03:21,568 --> 00:03:25,471
So we'll will very much so be
using the data from both of them together.

57
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And that's going to make our analysis
of this

58
00:03:28,708 --> 00:03:30,510
much more powerful

59
00:03:33,980 --> 00:03:34,247
Yeah.

60
00:03:34,247 --> 00:03:37,650
You can learn more from the NASA website.

61
00:03:37,650 --> 00:03:40,887
So nasa.gov/Hubble,
you can also follow

62
00:03:40,887 --> 00:03:43,122
on social media @NASAHubble.

63
00:03:43,923 --> 00:03:46,759
They also, especially on Instagram,
have lots of pretty pictures

64
00:03:46,759 --> 00:03:47,760
from the Hubble telescope.

65
00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:49,963
That's one of my favorite accounts
to follow

66
00:03:55,702 --> 00:03:58,438
So right now we can constrain roughly

67
00:03:58,438 --> 00:04:01,874
how bright it is and that can tell us
about how massive it is.

68
00:04:02,675 --> 00:04:05,545
So we can estimate
with the existing Hubble data

69
00:04:05,545 --> 00:04:08,548
that it's about 50 to
100 times the mass of the sun

70
00:04:10,550 --> 00:04:12,252
We also know that

71
00:04:12,252 --> 00:04:15,722
obviously it's at a time when the universe
was less than a billion years old.

72
00:04:15,722 --> 00:04:19,592
So we can infer that it's probably going
to look a little bit different

73
00:04:19,592 --> 00:04:23,630
than stars that we would see
in the Milky Way, for example.

74
00:04:24,731 --> 00:04:28,034
And this is something that we're planning
to follow up with the James

75
00:04:28,034 --> 00:04:29,969
Webb Space Telescope.

76
00:04:29,969 --> 00:04:32,105
So with that, we'll be able to say more.

77
00:04:32,105 --> 00:04:36,009
But right now we can tell that it's
a very massive star and it's going to be

78
00:04:36,009 --> 00:04:38,511
a very interesting object
to continue to study

79
00:04:43,383 --> 00:04:45,852
It is very likely no longer alive.

80
00:04:46,853 --> 00:04:48,321
It is so massive.

81
00:04:48,321 --> 00:04:51,524
Stars tend to live fast and die young,

82
00:04:52,191 --> 00:04:54,627
and this one being 50 to 100 times

83
00:04:54,627 --> 00:04:57,997
the mass of the sun,
is absolutely living up to that.

84
00:04:57,997 --> 00:05:02,068
So it would have a lifetime
of a few hundred million years.

85
00:05:02,702 --> 00:05:06,406
So it is most certainly
no longer around today.

86
00:05:07,874 --> 00:05:08,675
So it's

87
00:05:08,675 --> 00:05:12,211
it's one of the few cases where the star
that we're seeing is long dead.

88
00:05:12,211 --> 00:05:14,580
By the time we're able to see it

89
00:05:17,650 --> 00:05:21,054
So when we look back into the very distant

90
00:05:21,054 --> 00:05:24,290
universe, into a time when the universe
was less than a billion years old,

91
00:05:25,124 --> 00:05:29,729
there's been much less time for stars
to have lived and died and spread

92
00:05:29,729 --> 00:05:32,865
the heavier elements that they form
into the rest of the universe.

93
00:05:34,534 --> 00:05:37,070
And so that means that this star is

94
00:05:37,070 --> 00:05:39,505
much more likely to be

95
00:05:41,007 --> 00:05:44,177
low metallicity,
which means that there's not much else

96
00:05:44,177 --> 00:05:46,346
besides hydrogen and helium,

97
00:05:47,280 --> 00:05:50,516
and therefore, it's probably going to look
quite a bit different than the stars

98
00:05:50,516 --> 00:05:51,451
that we see today.

99
00:05:51,451 --> 00:05:52,819
Like the sun.

100
00:05:52,819 --> 00:05:55,321
In part, it ends up being much
more massive because of that.

101
00:05:56,422 --> 00:05:57,957
And it's since we know

102
00:05:57,957 --> 00:06:01,527
that the universe at this time is quite
a bit different than the universe today.

103
00:06:01,994 --> 00:06:05,765
It's going to be very exciting
to follow this up and get more information

104
00:06:05,765 --> 00:06:06,566
about it.

105
00:06:09,602 --> 00:06:10,970
Hubble's doing great.

106
00:06:10,970 --> 00:06:13,906
It's obviously
still making a lot of great discoveries,

107
00:06:14,807 --> 00:06:19,879
and it's continuing to
to pursue a wide array of science.

108
00:06:19,879 --> 00:06:24,183
And we expect that it will continue
to do well

109
00:06:24,183 --> 00:06:27,387
and make awesome discoveries
like this for years to come.

110
00:06:31,924 --> 00:06:32,959
I would love to say

111
00:06:32,959 --> 00:06:36,963
that there was a eureka moment,
but it was really much more of a slow burn

112
00:06:38,297 --> 00:06:41,067
It turned into a lot of double checking
whether or not

113
00:06:41,067 --> 00:06:44,504
we got our models right and trying
to figure out if we did something wrong

114
00:06:45,204 --> 00:06:47,039
to get such a high magnification

115
00:06:48,374 --> 00:06:50,376
But once we did eventually

116
00:06:50,376 --> 00:06:53,146
get to a point that we believed
that this was really a star

117
00:06:53,913 --> 00:06:56,416
at such a great distance,
it was incredibly exciting.

118
00:06:57,450 --> 00:07:00,887
And it was really fun
to get to work on something like this

119
00:07:00,887 --> 00:07:04,290
and to be part of this discovery

120
00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:07,427
Yeah.

121
00:07:07,427 --> 00:07:11,431
So the star is nicknamed Earendel,
which is an old English word

122
00:07:11,431 --> 00:07:14,534
that means the Morning Star

123
00:07:14,767 --> 00:07:17,670
So the time period
that we found the object

124
00:07:17,670 --> 00:07:22,074
in within the first billion years
is referred to generally as Cosmic Dawn.

125
00:07:23,042 --> 00:07:25,378
So we found that a sort of

126
00:07:25,378 --> 00:07:27,680
Morning Star kind of name fit very well.

127
00:07:29,549 --> 00:07:32,919
It's also for the Lord of the Rings
nerds out there.

128
00:07:32,919 --> 00:07:36,088
It's the same old English word
that Tolkien

129
00:07:36,088 --> 00:07:39,425
used for inspiration
for a character from the Silmarillion

130
00:07:40,426 --> 00:07:42,295
who also ends up becoming a star.

131
00:07:42,295 --> 00:07:45,832
So it's a nice parallel there

132
00:07:45,932 --> 00:07:49,035
and we just
we figured that The Morning Star

133
00:07:49,035 --> 00:07:51,871
seemed to fit for such an early object

134
00:07:56,843 --> 00:08:00,079
So I was kind of given a typical grad
student

135
00:08:00,079 --> 00:08:02,849
project of Here's
some data, see what you can find

136
00:08:03,816 --> 00:08:08,087
So we knew that the galaxy
that this star is sitting

137
00:08:08,087 --> 00:08:11,491
in was very highly magnified
by the foreground

138
00:08:12,358 --> 00:08:14,727
galaxy cluster, which is acts as the lens.

139
00:08:15,528 --> 00:08:18,030
So we end up seeing the lensed galaxy

140
00:08:18,030 --> 00:08:20,132
as this long banana shaped arc.

141
00:08:21,901 --> 00:08:24,270
And we can tell from the
just the first image

142
00:08:24,270 --> 00:08:28,040
that it was longer than any lensed arc

143
00:08:28,040 --> 00:08:30,276
at this distance that we had seen before.

144
00:08:31,110 --> 00:08:33,212
So I was given the task of

145
00:08:33,412 --> 00:08:36,315
figuring out what the galaxy looked like.

146
00:08:36,315 --> 00:08:37,717
And in the process of that

147
00:08:37,717 --> 00:08:41,754
and the process of figuring out
how highly magnified it was, I

148
00:08:42,788 --> 00:08:45,458
sort of stumbled
on to the fact that this one part of it

149
00:08:45,458 --> 00:08:48,327
seemed like it was at a very,
very high magnification.

150
00:08:48,794 --> 00:08:51,731
And the more that we looked into it,
the more it became clear

151
00:08:51,731 --> 00:08:54,534
that it was too small to be anything
other than a star.

152
00:08:55,268 --> 00:08:59,639
So that was how we sort of came to
the conclusion that this is a lensed star.