Astronomers say they've spotted the most distant star ever observed that is nine-billion light-years from Earth. The star is nicknamed Icarus after the Greek mythological character who fell to his death after flying too close to the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Co-author of the new study that reported the finding and a UC Berkeley astronomer, Alex Filippenko said, "For the first time ever we're seeing an individual normal star - not a supernova, not a gamma-ray burst, but a single, stable star - at a distance of 9 billion light-years." Normally, a star like this would be too faint to view. However, astronomers were able to see it with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, setting a new distance record. The study's lead author from the University of Minnesota, Patrick Kelley said, "This star is at least 100 times farther away than the next individual star we can study, except for supernova explosions."
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