Most Distant Star Discovered

Astronomy never ceases to amaze me.  There's something new every day and we learn more and more about our cosmos.  Our Universe is measured to be 13.8 billion years old.  The most distant object we have discovered is a galaxy located about 13.4 billion light years away.  This means we are looking at this galaxy just 0.4 billion years after the Big Bang.  That's very early in our Universe!!!  But what about stars?  How far away can we still see individual stars?

Individual stars are harder to see at greater distances because the give off much, much less light than a galaxy.  Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers recently detected a star, a single star, at distance of 9 billion light years.  9 billion light years!!!  That's incredible for a single star! 

Image of the farthest detected single star.

Why do I love science and astronomy in particular?  Because of discoveries such as these.  9 billion light years???  Amazing!!!