The James Webb Space Telescope has glimpsed the most distant known star in the universe, which had been announced by scientists using Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, just a few months ago.
The star called Earendelafter a character from JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” prequel “The Silmarillion” was discovered thanks to gravitational lensing in a hubble space telescope deep field image. The star, whose light took 12.9 billion Light years attain Landit’s so dim that it might be quite difficult to find it in the new James Webb Space Telescope image, which was posted to Twitter on Tuesday (Aug 2) by a group of astronomers using the account Cosmic Spring JWST (opens in a new tab).
The original Hubble image provides guidance on where to look through the enlarged crop. Essentially, Eärendel, is the small whitish dot below a group of distant galaxies. By comparing the Hubble image to the one captured by Webb, you can find the elusive Eärendel.
Gallery: First photos of the James Webb Space Telescope
We are excited to share the first JWST image of Eärendel, the most distant known star in our universe, as seen and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster. It was observed on Saturday by the JWST 2282 program. pic.twitter.com/YoZZKRsdzfAugust 2, 2022
“We are excited to share the first JWST image of Eärendel, the most distant known star in our universe, focused and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster,” Cosmic Spring astronomers wrote in the tweet, noting that the observations occurred on Saturday ( July 30).
The tweet refers to gravitational lensing, which is nature’s help to astronomers. The effect takes advantage of the fact that extremely massive bodies, such as galaxy clusters or supermassive black holes, bend the light of objects behind them. When light passes through such a body, it behaves as if it were passing through the lens of a telescope, and it is magnified, although it is also distorted. Therefore, the use of gravitational lenses extends the reach of telescopes, such as Hubble and Webb, allowing them to see farther and in greater detail.
Webb was designed to see the first galaxies that arose in the young universe in the first few hundred million years after the dark ages after the big Bang. Astronomers, however, thought that it would not be possible to see individuals stars of this first generation of suns that formed at that time. But gravitational lensing might actually allow them to see the interior of those early stellar clusters in detail.
“JWST was designed to study the first stars. Until recently, we assumed that meant populations of stars within the first galaxies,” astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, which operates Webb and Hubble, wrote in a recent report. paper (opens in a new tab) discussing technique. “But in the last three years, three strongly lensed single stars have been discovered. This offers new hope for directly observing single stars at cosmological distances with JWST.”
Earendel, also known by his proper name WHL0137-LS, is located in the constellation of Cetusbut don’t expect to see it if you look up at the night sky, even gravitational lensing isn’t that powerful.
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