Webb telescope finds record 44 stars
Stars in galaxy so far that light dates to when universe was half present age: Experts
People visit Beyond the Light Exhibition, curated with visuals obtained from the James Webb Space Telescope, in New York, United States on August 15, 2023.
ISTANBUL
More than 40 ancient stars have been spotted in a distant galaxy by NASA's Webb Telescope, researchers announced in a new study.
Fengwu Sun, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and his team, studied a galaxy nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth, from a period when the universe was only half its current age.
In the distant galaxy, the team discovered 44 stars, made visible through the phenomenon of gravitational lensing and the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) exceptional ability to collect light.
Recent advancements in astronomy have unlocked new possibilities by utilizing gravitational lensing, a natural magnification effect triggered by the intense gravitational fields of massive objects.
Gravitational lenses can magnify the light of distant stars by hundreds or even thousands of times, making it possible to detect them with sensitive instruments like the JWST.
The discovery was published in the journal Nature Astronomy and it represents a record-breaking achievement, marking the largest number of individual stars ever found in the distant universe.
"It was an exciting find because it was the first time we were able to see so many individual stars so far away," said Sun, according to the Center for Astrophysics.
