Carnival of Space 555

The Carnival of Space 555 is up at Everyday Spacer.

Universe Today – The Most Distant Star Ever Seen, Only 4.4 Billion Years After the Big Bang

A team of astronomers recently used Hubble to locate the most distant star ever discovered. This hot blue star, which was located in a galaxy cluster, existed just 4.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery of this star is expected to provide new insights into the formation and evolution of stars and galaxy clusters during the early Universe, as well as the nature of dark matter itself.

The discovery was made by an international team of scientists led by Patrick Kelly (of the University of Minnesota), Jose Diego (of the Instituto de Física de Cantabria in Spain) and Steven Rodney (of the University of South Carolina). Together, they observed the distant star in the galaxy cluster MACS J1149-2223 in April 2016 while studying the supernova explosion known as heic1525

Universe Today – Simulated View of a Newly Forming Planetary System with Rings and Gaps