Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made a groundbreaking discovery by revealing over 40 individual stars in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years from the Milky Way, halfway back to the beginning of the universe. This is the largest number of individual stars ever detected in the distant universe.
The unique image was created using gravitational lensing, a technique that uses the bending of space-time around massive objects to magnify and reveal distant objects. The JWST’s high-resolution optics took advantage of this effect, allowing scientists to detect the light from 44 stars in a nearby galaxy that had been bent into an arc, dubbed the “Dragon Arc”.
Gravitational lensing works by warping the path of light around massive foreground objects, creating circular rings or arcs that reveal the presence of background objects. In this case, the JWST captured an arc-shaped image that showed individual stars in a distant galaxy.
The discovery was published today in Nature Astronomy and is seen as a major breakthrough in understanding the distant universe. Scientists hope that further observations will provide insights into dark matter, which makes up around 85% of the universe’s mass-energy budget.
Many of the detected stars are red supergiants, similar to Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, which can be observed in the eastern night sky after sunset. The JWST’s infrared sensitivity allowed scientists to detect these distant stars for the first time.
The findings suggest that future studies will use the knowledge gained from studying red supergiants in our local galaxy to better understand their behavior at an early epoch of galaxy formation.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2025/01/06/history-made-as-webb-telescope-finds-44-stars-near-big-bang—heres-how-it-did-it