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Astronomers utilized the James Webb Space Telescope to discover 44 stars situated halfway across the universe – a record-breaking count of individual stars observed that far away.
NASA investigates galaxies that resemble ‘blood-soaked eyes’
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope are probing a pair of eerie galaxies millions of light-years away.
- The team’s conclusions, which were released on Monday in the journal Nature, also reveal a technique for exploring dark matter, which continues to be one of the universe’s biggest enigmas.
Astronomers, focusing on regions halfway across the observable universe, have recently identified the highest number of individual stars ever detected from such a distance – a task once thought nearly impossible.
In order to achieve this monumental finding, the research team employed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and its exceptional resolution capability to reveal 44 separate stars in a galaxy so distant, its radiation originates from a time when the universe was only half its current age.
This finding represents the most individual stars discovered in the distant universe to date. The research findings, which were published Monday in the journal Nature, also unveil a method to investigate dark matter, which remains one of the universe’s most significant puzzles, according to study co-author Fengwu Sun.
“This revolutionary discovery shows, for the first time, that observing large quantities of individual stars within a distant galaxy is achievable,” Sun, associated with the Center for Astrophysics, an institution jointly managed by the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, stated in a declaration.
Gravitational lensing reveals unprecedented number of distant stars
Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, house tens of billions of stars that can be easily observed. Even in nearby galaxies, such as Andromeda, which is approximately 2.5 million light-years away, astronomers can view stars individually.
However, when astronomers glance at galaxies billions of light-years away, individual stars may appear blurry – merging together as their light traverses vast distances to reach Earth. Consequently, astronomers have faced challenges in exploring how distant galaxies form and develop.
“For us, galaxies that are extremely distant typically resemble a vague, fuzzy mass,” said study lead author Yoshinobu Fudamoto, an astronomer at Chiba University in Japan, in a statement. “But actually, those masses are composed of countless individual stars.”
Thanks to recent progress in scientific techniques, astronomers are now improving at identifying those individual distant stars. Utilizing a method known as gravitational lensing, the research team was able to achieve their historic stellar observation in a distant galaxy nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth.
As initially anticipated by Albert Einstein, gravitational lensinghappens when a substantial astronomical object induces a significant curvature in spacetime, allowing the trajectory of light around it to appear visibly refracted, much like a lens would do. This phenomenon can enhance the brightness of far-off stars, enabling devices such as the Webb telescope to identify them.
Findings derived from Webb images of the ‘Dragon Arc’ galaxy
The group of astronomers did not anticipate locating the plethora of stars while analyzing Webb images of a galaxy referred to as the Dragon Arc.
Fortunately, the luminosity from the stars was amplified by a gigantic cluster of galaxies situated in front of it, named Abell 370. The gravitational lensing effect subsequently elongated the Dragon Arc’s characteristic spiral into a stretched form, “like a hall of mirrors of cosmic proportions,” as stated in the press release associated with the research article.
“Upon processing the data, we recognized that there seemed to be a number of distinct stellar points,” Sun remarked. “It was a thrilling discovery because it marked the first occasion we could observe so many individual stars at such great distances.”
By examining the hues of each star within the Dragon Arc, the team determined that numerous stars are red supergiants, akin to Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation. Although the Hubble Space Telescope was previously capable of detecting seven out of the 44 stars identified, the Webb telescope’s proficiency in detecting infrared wavelengths permitted astronomers to “distinguish stars that were formerly beyond our reach,” Sun noted.
Additionally, the team is confident that the identification of so many stars will assist scientists in better comprehending dark matter.
Will this significant discovery encourage future explorations?
The investigators aspire that their significant discovery will lead to subsequent examinations of magnified stars in both the Dragon Arc galaxy and other remote galaxies.
“These results have generally been restricted to just one or two stars per galaxy,” Fudamoto explained. “To analyze stellar populations in a statistically substantial manner, we require many more observations of singular stars.”
Eric Lagatta reports on breaking and trending topics for USA TODAY. Contact him at [email protected]
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