A bright blue giant nicknamed Icarus is now the farthest star humans have ever seen.

The supergiant star (officially named MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1) lives more than halfway across the observable universe. It's much bigger than our own sun and hundreds of thousands of times brighter. Despite its brilliance, it still took nine billion years for its shining light to reach Earth.

A group of astronomers had been monitoring a far-off supernova—the explosive death of a giant star—using the Hubble Space Telescope when they saw a new speck of light.

Its glow was given a boost thanks to what's called gravitational lensing. This is when gravity from a massive celestial object acts like a magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the light from