A team of astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of astronomy, observing individual stars in a galaxy over 6.5 billion light-years away. This milestone challenges previous observational limits and opens new avenues for understanding the universe’s structure and dark matter.
The researchers observed a galaxy located nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth, from a time when the universe was half its current age. They identified 44 individual stars whose brightness changed over time due to gravitational lensing, a natural magnification effect caused by massive objects bending light.
The discovery was made possible by a serendipitous alignment of “lucky stars” and the combined effects of macrolensing and microlensing from the galaxy cluster and nearby stars. The team analyzed colors of each star and found that many are red supergiants, similar to Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion.
This breakthrough not only sets a new record for the largest number of individual stars detected in a distant universe but also offers a new pathway to explore one of the cosmos’s greatest enigmas – dark matter. Future JWST observations are expected to capture more magnified stars, providing insight into the structure of gravitational lenses and potentially shedding light on the elusive nature of dark matter.
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/hidden-stars-halfway-across-the-universe-the-webb-telescopes-stunning-discovery