![]() ![]() Located in a galaxy that existed about 3 billion years after the big bang, it is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000. A Kaiju StarĪmong the transients the team identified, one stood out in particular. We can see transients everywhere,” said Haojing Yan of the University of Missouri in Columbia, lead author of one paper describing the scientific results.įinding so many transients with observations spanning a relatively short time frame suggests that astronomers could find many additional transients in this cluster and others like it through regular monitoring with Webb. “We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. The remaining two transients are within more moderately magnified background galaxies and are likely to be supernovae. Twelve of those transients were located in three galaxies that are highly magnified by gravitational lensing, and are likely to be individual stars or multiple-star systems that are briefly very highly magnified. They identified 14 such transients across the field of view. The goal was to search for objects varying in observed brightness over time, known as transients. The research team combined their three epochs of observations, each taken weeks apart, with a fourth epoch from the CANUCS (CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey) research team. While the new Webb observations contribute to this aesthetic view, they were taken for a specific scientific purpose. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster “The whole picture doesn’t become clear until you combine Webb data with Hubble data,” said Windhorst. Some galaxies also appear very red because they contain copious amounts of cosmic dust that tends to absorb bluer colors of starlight. Those colors give clues to galaxy distances: The bluest galaxies are relatively nearby and often show intense star formation, as best detected by Hubble, while the redder galaxies tend to be more distant as detected by Webb. The broad range of wavelengths, from 0.4 to 5 microns, yields a particularly vivid landscape of galaxies. To make the image, in general the shortest wavelengths of light were color-coded blue, the longest wavelengths red, and intermediate wavelengths green. “We are building on Hubble’s legacy by pushing to greater distances and fainter objects,” said Rogier Windhorst of Arizona State University, principal investigator of the PEARLS program (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science), which took the Webb observations. ![]() Webb’s infrared view significantly bolsters this deep look by going even farther into the early universe with its infrared vision. Hubble pioneered the search for some of the intrinsically faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected. This cluster was the first of a set of unprecedented, super-deep views of the universe from an ambitious, collaborative Hubble program called the Frontier Fields, inaugurated in 2014. It includes a bounty of galaxies outside the cluster and a sprinkling of sources that vary over time, likely due to gravitational lensing – the distortion and amplification of light from distant background sources. The image reveals a wealth of details that are only possible to capture by combining the power of both space telescopes. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. In this image, blue represents data at wavelengths of 0.435 and 0.606 microns (Hubble filters F435W and F606W) cyan is 0.814, 0.9, and 1.05 microns (Hubble filters F814W, and F105W and Webb filter F090W) green is 1.15, 1.25, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 microns (Hubble filters F125W, F140W, and F160W, and Webb filters F115W and F150W) yellow is 2.00 and 2.77 microns (Webb filters F200W, and F277W) orange is 3.56 microns (Webb filter F356W) and red represents data at 4.1 and 4.44 microns (Webb filters F410M and F444W). The resulting wavelength coverage, from 0.4 to 5 microns, reveals a vivid landscape of galaxies whose colors give clues to galaxy distances: The bluest galaxies are relatively nearby and often show intense star formation, as best detected by Hubble, while the redder galaxies tend to be more distant, or else contain copious amount of dust, as detected by Webb. This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |