A group of scientists revealed on Wednesday that the James Webb Space Telescope offered up some spectacular images of El Gordo, a galaxy cluster located 9.7 billion light-years from Earth.
The galaxy cluster's Spanish name translates to “The Fat One” and, as it turns out, is indeed fat: the celestial body has a mass equivalent of about 3 million billion suns.
In addition to its massive size, and distance, El Gordo offers NASA a view into background galaxies with greater accuracy, with NASA explaining the system acts as a “natural, cosmic magnifying glass through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing."
“Lensing by El Gordo boosts the brightness and magnifies the sizes of distant galaxies. This lensing effect provides a unique window into the distant universe,” said Brenda Frye, a co-leader of the PEARLS-Clusters branch of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) who also serves as a lead author in one of the studies examining the El Gordo observations.
"Gravitational lensing was predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago. In the El Gordo cluster, we see the power of gravitational lensing in action," adds Rogier Windhorst, of Arizona State University and the principal investigator of the PEARLS program.
Using infrared technology the Webb telescope was able to capture a series of subjects, including: El Anzuelo (The Fishhook), a bright arc or “swoosh” shown in fiery red. Another object is a long, pencil-thin line known as La Flaca (Thin One). While the Fishhook’s light took 10.6 billion years to reach Earth, the Thin One’s light took nearly 11 billion years.
“We were able to carefully dissect the shroud of dust that envelops the galaxy center where stars are actively forming," said Patrick Kamieneski, of Arizona State University and lead author on a second paper. "Now, with Webb, we can peer through this thick curtain of dust with ease, allowing us to see firsthand the assembly of galaxies from the inside out."
According to NASA the team then found another galaxy, not far from La Flaca. Within that galaxy, scientists were able to find a single red giant star they nicknamed Quyllur (a Quechua term for star), making it the first individual red giant star observed beyond 1 billion light-years from Earth.
“It's almost impossible to see lensed red giant stars unless you go into the infrared. This is the first one we’ve found with Webb, but we expect there will be many more to come,” said Jose Diego of the Instituto de Física de Cantabria in Spain, lead author of a third paper on El Gordo.
In addition to these subjects, the team was also able to find five lensed galaxies that made up a small cluster located about 12.1 billion light-years from Earth. This cluster could hold a total of 17 galactic members.
"We examined whether the properties of these galaxies are any different than the ultra-diffuse galaxies we see in the local universe, and we do actually see some differences. In particular, they are bluer, younger, more extended, and more evenly distributed throughout the cluster." Timothy Carleton of Arizona State University, who served as lead author on another paper regarding the observations, said in the statement.
"This suggests that living in the cluster environment for the past 6 billion years has had a significant effect on these galaxies."