This part of the image also shows the four images of the Refsdal supernova, arranged in an Einstein cross. The square indicates the position where the star appeared in May 2016 - its image magnified by gravitational microlensing.
The image to the left shows a part of the the deep-field observation of the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 from the Frontier Fields programme gathered in 2014. This image composite shows the discovery of the most distant known star using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In the case of Icarus, gravity from the foreground galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 acts as a natural lens, a magnifying glass that bends the light of the faraway star and other distant objects in the background and amplifies their brightness. Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon that occurs when light from a background object is bent by a massive object as it travels from the source to the observer. The cluster, named MACS J1149+2223, lies about 5 billion light-years from Earth, between us and the distant spiral galaxy that harbours Icarus. However, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was able to capture the star through a gravitational lens – a massive foreground galaxy cluster – that magnified it more than 2,000 times. Icarus normally has an apparent magnitude of 29.9 and is far too faint to be spotted even in the largest telescopes. It is at least a hundred times more distant than the previous record-holder, the O-type supergiant SDSS J1229+1122. Icarus lies at a distance of 14.4 billion light years from Earth. It is the second most distant individual non-supernova star known, after Earendel (WHL0137-LS), discovered in March 2022. Icarus (MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1) is a blue supergiant discovered through a gravitational lens in 2018.
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