Godzilla
Luminous blue variable candidate
Among the most magnified stars ever seen
One of the most magnified, and possibly most luminous, individual stars ever detected, glimpsed in a galaxy whose image is smeared into a bright arc by a foreground lens. Its nature is still debated, with a giant unstable star the leading explanation.
Illustration from its stellar type, not a photograph
10.9 billion ly
from Earth
z = 2.37
redshift
Its light has been travelling 10.9 billion years to reach us, so you see Godzilla as it was 10.9 billion years ago, early in the history of the universe.
Source · Diego et al. 2022, A&A 665, A134 · View on Wikidata
It lives in
the Sunburst Arc galaxy, gravitationally lensed
Too distant to catalog as a galaxy of its own; visible only because a closer mass bends its light toward us.