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Earendel, The Farthest Star Ever Found Is NOT a Star At All

2025-09-03 Science & Technology
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Anton Petrov
Anton Petrov
1.6m subscribers

Revisiting Earendel: Why Scientists Now Believe It Is a Star Cluster, Not a Single Star

Discover why the object once hailed as the most distant star, Earendel, likely represents an ancient cluster instead. This revision updates cosmology and reveals what the potential new record-holding individual stars might be.

Short Summary

  • The initial premise that Earendel is an individual star proved incorrect after new James Webb data analyzed its size and spectra.
  • New lensing models incorporating dark matter suggest Earendel spans several light-years, fitting the profile of a globular cluster.
  • Researchers are now focusing on two other candidates (Star 1 and Star 2) potentially confirmed as the farthest individual stars.

Anton corrects previous reporting, detailing how updated spectroscopic analysis of Earendel, combined with revised gravitational lensing models, strongly points toward it being a massive star cluster formed early in the universe, not a singular star.

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Description

Support this channel on Patreon to help me make this a full time job: https://www.patreon.com/whatdamath (Unreleased videos, extra footage, DMs, no ads) Alternatively, PayPal donations can be sent here: http://paypal.me/whatdamath Get a Wonderful Person Tee: https://teespring.com/stores/whatdamath More cool designs are on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3QFIrFX Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about Earendel, the object we thought was a star but isn't Links: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aded93/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acb645 Additional videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxeFWmM85GU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmzHzzrJTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuWuTTHOAOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUJCEDYe_AE #earendel #hubble #universe 0:00 Earendel updates 0:55 How this was found originally 2:10 New research - it's not a star! 4:35 What this seems to be 5:40 What's the new record holder then? 6:50 Actual record holder from a different study 9:00 Conclusions and what's next? Enjoy and please subscribe Bitcoin/Ethereum to spare? Donate them here to help this channel grow! bc1qnkl3nk0zt7w0xzrgur9pnkcduj7a3xxllcn7d4 or ETH: 0x60f088B10b03115405d313f964BeA93eF0Bd3DbF Thank you to all Patreon supporters of this channel Special thanks also goes to all the wonderful supporters of the channel through YouTube Memberships Licenses used: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ and relevant Creative Commons licenses

Top Comments (10)

@PedroDoderoEscalante 2025-09-03

I hope those two stars are called after the two trees Laurelin and Telperion.

236 10 replies
@flashkraft 2025-09-04

"Earendel, The Farthest Star Ever Found Is NOT a Star At All" Yes thats right. Its a flying sailing ship with a Silmaril on its bow

191 4 replies
@alatreon7451 2025-09-03

One of the things that I’m most excited to learn when I’m doing astronomy and astrophysics is learning how we can distinguish these kinds of details about objects in very deep space from such a small sample size of data to work with. Like how you can deduce that a star in a gravitational lens is actually a binary system, that’s crazy to me and I think it’s gonna be really fun

170 18 replies
@charlesjmouse 2025-09-03

It's very interesting to know globular clusters go back that far... it suggests they are their own thing and not the remains of something else, ruling out a few possibilities.

75 9 replies
@thebluelunarmonkey 2025-09-03

So many billions of light years away. Wonder what these objects are now. Supernovae, black holes, neutron stars in a sea of red dwarf stars waiting out the end of the universe?

35 8 replies
@jimcurtis9052 2025-09-03

Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. 🙂

34
@bigsilverorb3492 2025-09-03

Just imagine how many objects are invisibly among those we can see through lensing, it must be immense.

17
@Kytes93 2025-09-04

James webb keeps on giving

14
@InfinitySecrets-edu 2025-09-04

Thanks for breaking down the science behind Earendel's discovery!

9
@sparkly_nerd 2025-09-05

i love the nerdy names that scientists use to name things

3

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