A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a supernova hosting a galaxy not once, not twice, but three times at different times.
This seemingly time-defying image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was made possible by the massive gravitational influence of a prominent galaxy cluster and a light-bending phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. Horn called “gravitational lens”.
In his theory of general relativity, Einstein predicted that mass warps the fabric of space and time, or “spacetime”. It is like placing a ball on a stretched sheet of rubber, with the ball causing it to cut through the sheet. The greater the mass of the bullet, the greater the degree of deformation it causes. This is also true in the case of space-time, stars cause more “bending” than planets, and galaxies warp space more than stars.
This distortion affects the passage of light as it passes in front of the mass object from a background object. In extreme cases, because light can take different paths around the lensed object than the back-lensed object on its way to us, this can cause the object to magnify the background d or even appear at multiple points in the sky. This means that this phenomenon, “gravitational lensing,” has become a powerful tool for astronomers in studying very distant objects.
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The visible object in this new JWST image is galaxy cluster RX J2129, located about 3.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. RX J2129 shows a galaxy hosting a red background supernova reproducing it.
The supernova explosion was detected by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and is a Type Ia supernova identified in 2022riv. Astronomers often call these “standard candles” because of the symmetry of their light. This regularity means that Type Ia supernovae can be used as a tool for measuring cosmic distances because they look exactly the same at the same distance.
As a gravitational lens, RX J2129 created three images of this galaxy that are not the same in size, location, or even age due to the different paths taken by the light from the background galaxy and thus the different times when it arrived at the JWST.
The light following the longest path shows the background galaxy at its most advanced stage and at a time when the supernova was still occurring. The next image shows the second longest galactic path after only 320 days, and the last with the shortest light path 1000 days after the first. In these last two images, the AT 2022riv supernova has already disappeared from view.
Also visible in the upper right corner of the image are several background objects which, due to the distorting effect of gravitational lensing, appear as concentric arcs of light.
Observations were made by JWST using the near infrared camera (Opens in a new tab) (NIRSpec) which was able to measure the brightness of AT 2022riv, a very distant and therefore early supernova. The powerful Space Telescope also performed a spectroscopic analysis on the light from the event, which should allow comparison of this distant supernova with Type Ia supernovae that have recently appeared in the local universe.
This comparison can be used to test the accuracy of these supernovae’s use when measuring distances, and thus validate the results of one of astronomy’s most useful tools.
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