He Hubble Space Telescope It was the first tool that was able to maximize the gravitational lens effect, in which the curvatures of galaxies are used to bend light and thus extend the gaze into the depths of the cosmos. That same technique was used with the James Webb Space Telescope and the result was wonderful.
Thanks to this method, scientists from the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA They captured the start of star formation in galaxies that are 6.3 billion away from Earth. That’s a little less than half of the universe visible to us.
A foreground cluster of galaxies has magnified distant galaxies, distorting their shapes and creating the bright patches of light that spread throughout this image. This effect, which astronomers refer to as gravitational lensing. This is technically explained by the ESA portal.
Looking at the image above, the long, bright, distorted arc extending close to the core is one such example. A distant galaxy known as the Cosmic Seahorse displays its brightness that is greatly magnified by gravitational lensing.
Specifically, the capture was taken by the James Webb’s main near-infrared camera, called NIRCam. The cluster of lensing galaxies SDSS J1226+2149 is grouped in the image.
This image shows just one observation from a program designed to investigate star formation in distant galaxies.
It reveals how quickly stars form and how their environment develops to make way for new stars in their nearby regions.