Using the Hubble telescope, scientists recently caught a glipse of the most distant single star ever seen. They gave it the Tolkein-inspired name of Earendel.
“In the Lord of the Rings, Eärendil is a half-elven character who travels the seas carrying a jewel, a ‘Silmaril,’ called the morning star.
‘It means the dawn star, and it’s an Old English word. It’s lovely. And this is a star, literally, from the dawn of time, the dawn of stars forming,’ [one of the scientists] said about the star’s name. ‘This is the first star, the farthest star we’ve ever seen, and I think Earendel is a beautiful name for it.’
‘We suspect it’s not the absolute first generation of stars,’ she added. ‘We think that maybe this is one of the subsequent … maybe a couple tens of millions of years after star formation began [in the universe].'”
The thing is that the light that the scientists saw actually left that star a long, long, long time ago. The star (if it still even exists) is 12.9 billion light-years from Earth.
I’ll have more to say later, but I’ve been amazed at the people who are amazed at the Supreme Court taking away abortion and preparing to take away a host of other rights. Because that light left that star a long time ago. You may just now be seeing it, but anyone paying attention knew that this star exploded years ago, at least back as far as 2016, and likely before then.
It just doesn’t have a pretty name.
hecatedemeter 
But her emails! Elections have consequences, as you’ve always said.