NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has made history by detecting a record number of new stars in a distant galaxy. The telescope, which is the largest and most complex space observatory serving thousands of astronomers worldwide, captured an image revealing 44 individual stars in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years away from Earth.
Astronomers used the Webb telescope’s high-resolution optics and gravitational lensing to detect the new stars. Gravitational lensing is a technique that uses the massive gravity of galaxies or other cosmic objects to magnify and distort the light from distant galaxies, allowing astronomers to see faint background sources like individual stars.
The discovery was made possible by the strong gravitational magnification caused by a large cluster of galaxies called Abell 370. The telescope’s advanced optics allowed researchers to analyze the colors of each star in the “Dragon Arc,” a visible arc created by gravitational lensing and light bending beyond Abell 370. Most of the stars found are red supergiants, which are stars nearing the end of their life cycles.
The discovery contrasts with earlier findings, which identified blue supergiants instead. The study also highlights the potential for future Webb telescope observations to capture more magnified stars in the same galaxy, allowing astronomers to better understand dark matter and its role in the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/astronomers-discovered-44-stars-distant-184332119.html