APOD: 2022 April 6 - Earendel: A Star in the Early Universe

Good evening, Rallypoint, and here is second of the Hump Day Two-fer Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Earendel: A Star in the Early Universe." If you didn't notice the articles last week, today's APOD is about a recent discovery of a star believed to be so far away that we are seeing light from the earliest days of the Universe. Gravitational lensing and red shift are both worthy topics behind the April 6th APOD, but I'd like to focus on the name: Earendil. Earendil is a key character in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (I'm surprised that reports do not include anyone asking the scientists involved about their choice of a name). This from the Tolkien Gateway:

"...Tolkien created the name based on Anglo-Saxon éarendel. He says that he was struck by the "great beauty" of the name as early as 1913, which he perceived as 'entirely coherent with the normal style of A-S, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not "delectable" language.'

Tolkien was also aware of the name's Germanic cognates (Old Norse Aurvandill, Lombardic Auriwandalo), and the question why the Anglo-Saxon one rather than the Lombardic or Proto-Germanic form should be taken up in the mythology is alluded to in The Notion Club Papers [the title of an abandoned novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously]. The Old Norse together with the Anglo-Saxon evidence point to an astronomical myth, the name referring to a star, or a group of stars, and the Anglo-Saxon in particular points to the Morning Star as the herald of the rising Sun."