Astronomy experts....?

Question

What is the furthest star that has so far been discovered in the entire Universe and how far away is it?

Answer 1

There are billions of stars in each galaxy that discovered so far so there's no point in trying to find the furthest star. The largest know star is VY Canis Majoris!

Answer 2

A better question is "What is the farthest observed galaxy" because the farthest observed star is going to lie in the galaxy that is the farthet away. Although we don't know what star that is because the galaxy is so far away, we know that the farthest star is going to be the farthest star in that galaxy. The farthest observed galaxy is Abell 1835 IR1916 which is about 13.26 billion light years away.

Answer 3

I think your real question is, what is the furthest individual star that has been observed.  I hope someone will answer this.

Answer 4

You mean the furthest galaxy because stars lie in galaxies. The farthest known group of galaxies is called the Hubble Deep Field, which is 13 billion light years away.

Answer 5

Although the furthest galaxy observed was a bit further away, the furthest away star we have observed as a star and not part of a galaxy was probably the star that exploded in gamma ray burst 050904, at a redshift of 6.3 - about 12.8 billion light years away.

Answer 6

The farthest observed star will not be the farthest observed object -- that would be a quasar, 'though I can't say which one exactly.

Nor can I say which individual star is the farthest - a working professional astronomer may have a hard time answering that -- but I can tell you what type of star it probably is. That would be a Cepheid variable star in some relatively nearby galaxy. Why is that? Cepheids are giant, very bright stars that vary their brightness - variable stars - and astronomers use them to Gage the distance to nearby galaxies, since the period with which they cycle through their brightness changes signals their actual average brightness quite accurately - sort of like if you looked out to sea at night and could know that the light on that buoy out there is exactly 400 Watts, so you can thereby estimate its distance, based on the actual source brightness and the light's apparent brightness to the observer.

ps- silly me, forgot supernovas. don't think i'd had my coffee yet.

Answer 7

the visible Universe is about 15 billion light years there are surely many faint stars at great distances which we cannot see.

Answer 8

First, we aren't certain quasars are single 'stars', in the strict sense of the term.  In the loose sense, a star is a single object that looks like a star, which I suppose, used to describe quasars (they are now being observed with better resolution, and are or are within larger (galaxy-like objects).

The farthest observable single star would be a type II supernova in some far off galaxy.  I don't know who or what institution keeps records of such things.  But I would question the accuracy of such records because the distance to such a star would be an estimate based on it's apparent brightness.  That seems to me to leave a lot of room for errors.

The farthest star visible to the unaided eye that I've heard of was a supernova in M-31, which reached a magnitude of 4, so was visible with ease.