If the black-hole-dark-matter theory was correct, the star would have appeared brighter. One theory proposed that dark matter was made of black holes, but what the researchers saw of Icarus didn't support that theory - looking back at a decade of Hubble images, they didn't see Icarus' brightness vary over time. The Guardian reports that the team also used their view of Icarus to test a theory about dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 27 percent of the universe (its counterpart, dark energy, makes up another 68 percent). The view let scientists test dark matter theory Such distant views of the universe are helping astronomers learn about what the universe was like before our time, even giving us glimpses back to the moments after the Big Bang.Ĥ. When Icarus released the photons currently hitting the Hubble's cameras, Earth hadn't even formed yet - it would be another 4.4 billion years before our solar system even began to coalesce from the dust of the universe. Even traveling at its immense speeds, by the time light from this distant star reached Earth, 9 billion years had passed. And because of this astronomical (sorry) size, it can take a really long time for light to reach Earth from the cosmic wilderness. The universe is way, way bigger than you can probably comprehend. That makes sense, since Icarus' distant light is actually somewhat like a time machine. Stars like Icarus and Rigel are rare in the universe today, but in the early universe, they were common according to io9, most of the early stars were blue supergiants at some point in their lives. Analysis of the star's light showed it was a blue supergiant, one of the hottest and highest-mass stars we know of the blue supergiant Rigel A, the bright left "foot" of the constellation Orion, is 23 times more massive than the sun, and estimated to be several hundred thousand times brighter. Icarus would be an oddity in the universe - if it were still around. Icarus also got a special boost from an extra-magnifying star within the galaxy cluster, making it appear four times brighter over the course of the time the astronomers studied it. In short, the gravity of large, stacked-up celestial objects (in this case, a cluster of galaxies) bend light, creating a magnifying glass-effect for anything behind them. Overall, researchers told The Guardian, Icarus was magnified more than 2,000 times. Icarus was visible because of an astronomical phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Fortunately, astronomers got a little bit of help from the universe in spotting it (and the Hubble telescope, props to that). Icarus is so far away that we technically shouldn't be able to see it: it's about 100 times further away than the most distant star telescopes have been able to view before now. Spotting Icarus was a stroke of good luck Here are four things you should know about this distant galactic neighbor, and why we're just seeing it for the first time. (For why we can still view it, though, see #3.) Thanks to the constant expansion of the universe, Icarus would now be much further away from our planet by now, it's probably gone supernova itself, and formed either a black hole or neutron star. Most other objects spotted at this distance are either galaxies or exploding stars (AKA supernovas), which produce much more light than this distant glimmer. The star, MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1 (more simply known as "Icarus") was about 9 billion light years away when it emitted the light now reaching Earth. Image credit: NASA, ESA, P KELLY/University of Minnesota Icarus, the most distant star ever imaged, wasn't visible in previous years (2011) it was only thanks to gravitational lensing that it twinkled into view (2016).
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