Cosmic lens helps Hubble capture image of most distant star ever seen

Peering through the gravitational lens of a massive galaxy cluster 5 billion light years from Earth, astronomers have discovered a single, blue supergiant star 9 billion light years away, farther than any other normal star seen before. The star, dubbed Icarus, was magnified more than 2,000 times when it passed directly behind a sun-like star in the lensing cluster. This demonstrates a new way of studying stars in the earliest years of the universe.