2023-08-07 14:15:48
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image of a red supergiant star, called Quyllur, observed more than 1 billion light-years from Earth. It is the first time that a star of this type has been sighted so accurately and in distant galaxies.
This has been possible thanks to the infrared filters and the sensitivity provided by Webb, greater than that of Hubble, which had previously provided images of red supergiants closer to Earth and with less definition.
“Quyllur is the first red supergiant found at cosmological distances,” says José María Diego, a researcher at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in the Advanced Cosmology and Instrumentation Group of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), in Spain all these entities, and co-author of the study in which the observation was made. “It’s almost impossible to see lensed red giant stars other than in the infrared. This is the first we’ve found with Webb, but we hope there will be many more,” he adds.
This finding joins the first observations made by a team from the University of Arizona, in which the Spanish researcher participates, where distant and dusty objects have been sighted up to now inside the cluster of galaxies known as El Gordo unknown and that provide new scientific data.
The set of four studies that describe the finding is signed, in addition to José María Diego, by researchers from the University of Arizona Brenda Frye, Patrick Kamieneski, Tim Carleton and Rogier Windhorst, and have been published in the academic journals Astronomy & Astrophysics and Astrophysical Journal.
El Gordo is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old, making it a “cosmic teenager.” It is the most massive cluster known at the time, and the resulting image shows a variety of unusual and distorted galaxies only hinted at in earlier Hubble Space Telescope images.
The team has focused on this particular cluster because it acts as a natural cosmic magnifying glass through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Its powerful gravity bends and distorts light from objects behind it.
“El Gordo’s lensing increases the brightness and magnifies the size of distant galaxies. This lensing effect provides a unique window into the distant Universe,” explains Brenda Frye, a researcher at the University of Arizona, lead author of one of the four studies. who analyze the observations of El Gordo and co-director of the Pearls program (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science).
Another important object that has been observed in the Webb image is a long, pencil-thin line known as La Flaca, an enlarged distant galaxy whose light also took nearly 11 billion years to reach Earth. The surprise was that the IFCA researcher found this new giant red star in a galaxy close to La Flaca, which he has named Quyllur, the Quechua term used to describe a star.
Within the image of El Gordo, another of the most striking features that have been observed is a bright arch nicknamed El Anzuelo because of its shape. The light emitted by this galaxy took 10.6 billion years to reach Earth and its characteristic red color is due to a combination of the color of the galaxy’s own dust and “redshift”, a phenomenon that occurs when electromagnetic radiation that reflects an object appears redshifted at the end of the electromagnetic spectrum, due to its great distance.
By correcting for the distortions that the lenses create, the team was able to determine that El Anzuelo is about a quarter of the size of the Milky Way. In addition, they have studied the star formation history of the galaxy, finding that star formation died out rapidly in the center of the galaxy, a process known as fading.
“We have been able to carefully dissect the dust shell that envelops the center of the galaxy, where stars are formed,” explains Patrick Kamieneski, lead author of the second paper. “Now, with Webb, we can easily peer through this thick curtain of dust, and see firsthand the assembly of galaxies from the inside out,” he says.
In the image, marked in red, the red supergiant Quyllur is observed. (Image: NASA/ESA/CSA)
The research team has also identified five galaxies that appear to be a very young cluster of galaxies that formed around 12.1 billion years ago and some very faint galaxies that look like blobs, known as ultra-diffuse galaxies. These objects, which are scattered throughout the El Gordo cluster, have their stars widely distributed in space and their light traveled 7.2 billion years to reach us.
“Albert Einstein predicted gravitational lensing more than 100 years ago. In the El Gordo cluster we see the power of gravitational lensing in action,” concludes Rogier Windhorst, Principal Investigator of the Pearls program. “The Pearls images of El Gordo are out of this world beautiful. In addition, they have shown us how Webb can open Einstein’s treasure chest,” he concludes.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the result of an international collaboration led by NASA, ESA and CSA, respectively the US, European and Canadian space agencies. (Source: IFCA / CSIC)
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