How astronomers used gravitational lensing to discover 44 new stars in distant galaxy [View all]

The most powerful telescope to be launched into space has made history by detecting a record number of new stars in a distant galaxy.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, history's largest and most complex space observatory that serves thousands of astronomers around the world, has captured a unique image that revealed 44 individual stars in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years away from the Milky Way, according to a paper published Monday in Nature Astronomy.

Astronomers used Webb's high-resolution optics and distortion in space to reveal the existence of dozens of previously unknown stars, the researchers said. The detection of a "treasure trove" of stars was only possible because the light from the 44 new stars was magnified by a large cluster of galaxies, called Abell 370, in front of it, according to the Center for Astrophysics.

The technique is known as gravitational lensing, which is when a massive amount of matter -- like a cluster of galaxies -- creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight, according to NASA. The effect is essentially like looking through a giant magnifying glass.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/how-astronomers-discovered-44-new-stars-distant-galaxy/story?id=117381763

The things this telescope is seeing just blow the mind!