天文突破! 科學家發現最遙遠的恆星!

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found the farthest star ever observed.

近日，天文學家用哈勃太空望遠鏡發現了迄今最遙遠的恆星。

The discovery required the fortuitous alignment of a massive galactic cluster. The cluster warped the starlight, bending it toward Earth while magnifying the star 2,000 times.

這一發現需要一個大規模星系團的偶然對齊。該星團使恆星的星光偏離了原本的方向，照向地球，將這顆恆星放大了2000倍。

Officially, the star's name is MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1. But the astronomers call it Icarus.

這顆恆星的正式名稱爲MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1。但是天文學家們則稱其爲“伊卡洛斯”。

It was a hundredfold more distant than any other star previously detected, according to Patrick Kelly, an astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota.

明尼蘇達大學的天文物理學家帕特里克·凱利稱，該恆星比此前發現的任何其他恆星都要遠一百倍。

"The discovery of Icarus allows us to gather new insights into the constituents of the galaxy cluster," explains Steven Rodney, an astrophysicist at the University of South Carolina.

南卡羅來納大學的天文物理學家史蒂芬·羅德尼解釋稱：“伊卡洛斯的發現，使我們能夠對星系羣的組成部分有新的認識。”

Normally only phenomena like supernovas -- catastrophic stellar explosions -- or entire galaxies are detectable at such vast distances.

一般而言，只有超新星等現象（災難性的恆星爆炸）或整個星系才能在如此遠的距離下被觀測到。