One light-year, or the distance light travels in one Earth year, is 6 trillion miles. Now take that number and multiply it 28 billion times, and you'll have the distance of the new record for the farthest star ever observed.
The Hubble Space Telescope observed the star, which is said to be 50 to 500 times more massive than our sun, shining 28 billion light-years away, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
The star could be millions of times brighter than our sun and is the farthest detection of a star ever discovered, according to the study published on Wednesday.
Astronomers are calling the star Earendel, which is derived from an Old English word that means "rising light," according to the study.
Earendel is so far away from Earth that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us, and the observation could help astronomers understand the early years of the universe.
In 2018 Hubble discovered a star nicknamed Icarus that was observed when the universe was around four billion years old. Earendel was observed approximately 900 million years after the big bang, according to the study.
Brian Welch is an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the lead author of the study detailing the discovery.
In a statement released by NASA, Welch discussed what the discovery means and how it will help astronomers understand the universe.
"Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the stars around us today," Welch explained. "Studying Earendel will be a window into an era of the universe that we are unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know. It's like we've been reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter, and now we will have a chance to see how it all got started."
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A co-author of the study, Victoria Strait, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, shared in a statement that we are looking back in time when we observe stars like Earendel.
"As we peer into the cosmos, we also look back in time, so these extreme high-resolution observations allow us to understand the building blocks of some of the very first galaxies," Strait said in a statement, CNN reported.
"When the light that we see from Earendel was emitted, the universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of its current age. At that time it was 4 billion light-years away from the proto-Milky Way, but during the almost 13 billion years it took the light to reach us, the universe has expanded so that it is now a staggering 28 billion light-years away."
With the Hubble telescope soon retiring and the James Webb Telescope becoming operational, Welch shared that we may not see Earendel hold the record for as long as Icarus did.
"With Webb, we may see stars even farther than Earendel, which would be incredibly exciting," Welch said. "We'll go as far back as we can. I would love to see Webb break Earendel's distance record."
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