What phenomenon, described as a natural magnifying glass, aided the observation of Earendel?

Answer

Gravitational lensing

The observation of the single star Earendel, located incredibly far away, was only made possible due to a rare cosmic alignment involving a foreground object. This phenomenon occurs when a massive foreground object, specifically a galaxy cluster like WHL0137-08 in Earendel's case, bends the fabric of spacetime due to its gravity. This gravitational distortion acts to bend and amplify the light rays originating from the much more distant background source, effectively creating a natural magnifying glass. The text notes that this gravitational lensing magnified Earendel's light by a factor of at least 4,000 times, making it detectable by Hubble, and emphasizes that this reliance on fortunate alignments means the observed sample of highly lensed objects might not represent the average properties of early galaxies.

What phenomenon, described as a natural magnifying glass, aided the observation of Earendel?

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