Fortuitous Flash Candidate for the Farthest Star Yet Seen
Explanation:
Was this flash the farthest star yet seen?
An unexpected flash of light noticed fortuitously on
Hubble Space Telescope images may prove to be not only an unusual
gravitational lensing event but also an image of a
normal star 100 times farther away than any star previously imaged individually.
The
featured image shows the
galaxy cluster
on the left complete with many yellowish galaxies,
while on the right is an expanded square where a
source appeared in 2016 that was not evident in 2011.
The spectrum and variability of
this source are strangely unlike a
supernova,
but rather appear more consistent with a normal
blue supergiant star
magnified by about a factor of 2000 by a confluence of aligned
gravitational lenses.
Dubbed
Icarus,
the source is
in a galaxy
well behind the galaxy cluster and far across the universe -- at
redshift 1.5.
If the
lens interpretation is correct and Icarus is not an
exploding star,
further observations of it and other
similarly magnified stars could give information about the stellar and
dark matter content in the galaxy cluster and
the universe.
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Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
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NASA Official: Jay Norris.
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rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.