All the videos of stellar photography

After the Webb Space Telescope, which cost $65.438+000 billion, launched and sent back the first deep space image containing 654.38+0000 galaxies, the title of Hubble Space Telescope as an old-timer seems to have been eclipsed.

But people familiar with astronomy know that Hubble telescope, which has been in the sky for decades, is a weapon for human beings to observe the universe, compared with Weber telescope, which is still in the debugging stage. In recent decades, Hubble, the sharpest eye of human civilization, has taken countless photos of the deep space of the universe.

According to the new news released by NASA, Hubble telescope has recently set an astronomical record, that is, it has discovered a star farthest from the earth in history, with a distance of 65.438+029 billion light years.

As we all know, it is almost impossible to distinguish a single star at the distance of10 billion light years, because such a long distance is no longer the stage for a single star, and only galaxies with a diameter of several hundred thousand light years and hundreds of billions of stars can clearly distinguish it at this distance.

In the previous Hubble deep space photography, the images obtained by the astronomical community were all galaxies in the universe, and the shadow of a single star was never found in these galaxies. One is that stars can't exist independently from galaxies, and the other is that the brightness of a single star is too low to be found.

The reason why Hubble telescope can set a super record of "finding a star 65.438+0.29 billion light years away" is largely because this star is old enough and bright enough.

The distance of 65.438+0.29 billion light years means that the star Hubble saw was 65.438+0.29 billion years ago, while the age of the universe was only 65.438+0.382 billion years, so this star was named Ellendale: Ellendale was one of the first stars born after the Big Bang. At that time, there were few stars and few galaxies in the universe, so this star with brightness millions of times that of the sun was quite conspicuous.

The 300 million years after BIGBANG is called "the dawn of the universe". During this period, a large number of first-generation stars began to be born and gradually formed galaxies, while the second-generation stars with heavy elements such as the sun did not have a chance to appear. Six galaxies were discovered at the same time as Ellendale: Ellendale Star, and they were also the first members after BIGBANG.

But it is a pity that all this happened 65.438+0.29 billion years ago. A star millions of times brighter than the sun won't last long. Now it may already be a black hole. As for the six galaxies observed at the same time, it is possible to collide and merge into new galaxies in a long time.

In a word: these stars and galaxies seen by Hubble telescope are just a slice from the Big Bang 65.438+0.29 billion years ago, not the whole universe.

In fact, Hubble can see this star, not only because of its particularity, but also thanks to Einstein, who first proposed the "gravitational lens effect" in the universe.

The so-called gravitational lens is actually a magnifying glass or telescope in the universe. Because Einstein demonstrated in the general theory of relativity that photons in the universe will be affected by distorted space-time, when there is a gravitational source in front of a star or galaxy, the light emitted by this star or galaxy will be deflected.

In some special arrangements, the light emitted by the stars or galaxies in the rear will be amplified by the gravitational force of the galaxies in the foreground, so that astronomers can get a magnifying glass or telescope in the universe to see the stars and galaxies farther and deeper.

The discovery of Ellendale: Ellendale Star, 65.438+0.29 billion light years away, was taken by Hubble telescope with gravitational lens method. A galaxy, WHL0 137-08, whose mass is 900 trillion times that of the sun, used its powerful gravity to amplify the brightness of Ellendale: Ellendale star by thousands of times, and then it was exposed by Hubble telescope for 9 hours.

After Hubble's discovery is made public, NASA is going to let the Webber telescope also observe the Ellendale star in the future, because Webber's performance is stronger than Hubble's, and its observation results will reveal more information about this early star in the universe, such as its main element composition.

With the help of a series of new technologies, it is not even excluded that the Weber telescope can discover distant stars by using the gravitational lens effect. After all, the universe is so big that anything is possible.