James Webb Space Telescope Captures Unprecedented Images of Galaxies Bent by Gravitational Lensing and Stunning Supernova Encore – NASA Findings

Space is very psychedelic.

There are objects in the universe that are so massive – often clusters of galaxies – that they bend space like a bowling ball placed on a mattress. This creates a curved space lens. “Light follows these bends rather than moving in a straight line, distorting and brightening what is behind the object,” he adds. NASA explains.

A new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, a powerful observatory orbiting Earth at a distance of 1 million miles from Earth, shows a galaxy warped by this effect, technically called “gravitational lensing” and long predicted by Albert Einstein .

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The Webb image below shows a sea of ​​galaxies, some of which are spiral-shaped like our Milky Way. Near the center, to the right, is the curved, elongated galaxy MRG-M0138, located about 10 billion light years away. This is a very old and distant galaxy, but natural cosmic lenses have enhanced its light, making it appear alive.

Near the center right of this image you can see the stretching and bending light from the distant galaxy MRG-M0138.
Sumber: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Justin Pierel (STScI) / Andrew Newman (Carnegie Institution for Science)

And there is a surprise hidden behind this magnified light.

This close-up image of an outstretched galaxy shows the bright light of an exploding star, a cataclysmic event called a supernova. Scientists call it the “Encore Supernova,” and giant gravitational lensing causes it to appear several times in this image, as you can see in the circle below.

The same supernova is visible several times in this image of the curved galaxy MRG-M0138.
Sumber: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Justin Pierel (STScI) / Andrew Newman (Carnegie Institution for Science)

What’s more, astronomers hope the lens reveals something and more a copy of the same supernova from the 2030s. This will give astronomers a rare and valuable opportunity to measure how fast the universe is expanding.

“When a supernova explodes behind a gravitational lens, its light reaches Earth via several different paths. We can compare these lines to several trains leaving a station at the same time, all moving at the same speed and going to the same place. Each train takes a different route, and because of differences in trip length and terrain, the trains do not arrive at their destination at the same time” – Justin Pierel, NASA Einstein Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Andrew Newman, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute Carnegie Science Observatory Institution, explains wa NASA statement.

The varying speed of light

“By measuring differences in the timing of supernova images, we can measure the history of the expansion rate of the universe, known as Hubble Constantwhich is the main challenge of modern cosmology,” the scientists added.

The extraordinary capabilities of the Webb telescope

Engineers work on the giant gold-plated mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope.
Sumber: NASA/Desiree Stover

The Webb Telescope – a collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency – is designed to peer into the deepest reaches of space and reveal new information about the early universe. But also see interesting planets in our galaxy, as well as planets and moons in our solar system.

Here’s how Webb achieved his unmatched feat and will likely continue to do so for decades:

– Giant mirror: The Webb mirror, which captures light, is more than 21 feet in diameter. That’s more than two and a half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant ancient objects. As explained above, the telescope observed stars and galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

“We will see the first stars and galaxies forming,” Jean Creighton, astronomer and director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.

– Infrared display: Unlike Hubble, which primarily records light visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. Thanks to this, we can see more things in the universe. Infrared is longer wavelength than visible light, allowing light waves to glide through cosmic clouds more efficiently; light does not often collide with these solid particles and is not scattered by them. Ultimately, Webb’s infrared vision can penetrate places that Hubble can’t.

“It lifts the lid,” Creighton said.

– Peeking at a distant exoplanet: Telescope Webb has special equipment called a spectrograph that will revolutionize our understanding of this distant world. The instrument can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide and methane) are in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets – whether gas giants or smaller rocky planets. Webb will observe exoplanets in the Milky Way. Who knows what we will find?

“We can discover things we never thought possible” – Mercedes López-Morales, exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Institute Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonianhe told Mashable in 2021.

Astronomers have managed to discover interesting chemical reactions on a planet 700 light years away, and as explained above, observatories have begun observing one of the most anticipated places in space: an Earth-sized rocky planet in the solar system’s TRAPPIST system.

2023-12-23 11:06:30
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