farthest

Astronomers have observed a star that’s so far away, its light took 9 billion years to reach us here on Earth — about 4.5 billion years before our solar system even existed. And while scientists have peered at even more distant galaxies, which are visible due to light from their billions of stars, this helium-burning orb, nicknamed Icarus, is the most distant ordinary individual star an Earthling has observed, according to a statement from the University of California, Berkeley. (An ordinary, or main-sequence, star is one that is still fusing hydrogen to create helium; about 90 percent of the stars … Read more