SPACE — Scientists have released a new photo showing a view of colliding galaxies. This photo was produced from the collaboration of data from the Hubble Telescope in visible light and the James Webb Space Telescope in infrared light.
This cosmic phenomenon called MACS0416 is 4.3 billion light years from Earth. The merger of a pair of giant clusters will combine to form an even more massive collection of sparkling galaxies. The combination produces a colorful image like a Christmas tree.
The Hubble Telescope has long been used to search for faint and distant galaxies with long wavelengths of light.
Meanwhile, the James Webb telescope allowed searches to be carried out at greater distances, detecting invisible light deep in the early days of the universe. When the James Webb Telescope observes infrared light, it helps scientists look back in time to when the early universe was formed.
“We’re building on Hubble’s legacy by pushing objects farther and fainter,” said Rogier Windhorst, a professor at Arizona State University.
Windhorst is the principal investigator for the PEARLS, or Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science, program, which conducted the Webb observations.
Galaxy ‘Christmas tree’
Scientists release image of a Christmas tree galaxy. The colors in the image released Thursday (9/11/2023) are used to show distance.
The blue galaxies are the closest, full of star formation and easily seen in visible light by Hubble. Red galaxies are farther away and are best detected by Webb in infrared light.
Webb telescope observations are used to look for objects whose brightness changes over time, which are called transients. Within the galaxy cluster’s field of view, Webb helped astronomers identify 14 transients, all of which were visible due to gravitational lensing.
The transient includes 12 stars or star systems and two supernovae in the galaxy that were amplified using gravitational lensing.
Mothra Star System
One such transient phenomenon caught the attention of astronomers, namely a star system they nicknamed “Mothra,” the giant monster in the 1961 Japanese film. The star system, magnified up to 4,000-fold due to gravitational lensing, was traced to a galaxy of 3 billion years after the Big Bang.
Surprisingly, Mothra appeared detected in Hubble observations nine years ago. Astronomers are confused about how this happens, because there must be a certain alignment between the galaxy cluster and more distant stars to cause magnification at a given point in time.
“The most likely explanation is a globular star cluster that was too faint to be seen directly by Webb,” said José Diego, a researcher at the Physics Institute of Cantabria in Spain and lead author of another paper explaining the findings, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
2023-11-10 02:19:00
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