Investigating spectral data embedded in each pixel of images from Webb’s NIRSpec instrument, the astronomers identified a second new light source inside the ring. Amit Vishwas, an astronomer at Cornell University. “Earlier images of the same Einstein ring captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) contained hints of the companion resolved clearly by JSWT, but they couldn’t be interpreted as anything more than random noise,” said Dr. “Webb changes the way we view this system and opens up new venues to study how stars and galaxies formed in the early Universe.” “We found this galaxy to be super-chemically abundant, something none of us expected,” Peng said. ![]() SPT0418-47’s light was bent and magnified by a foreground galaxy’s gravity into a circle, called an Einstein ring.Ī deeper dive into the early Webb data released last fall produced a serendipitous discovery: a companion galaxy previously hidden behind the light of the foreground galaxy, one that surprisingly seems to have already hosted multiple generations of stars despite its young age, estimated at 1.4 billion years old. Scanning the first images of SPT0418-47, a well-known strongly-lensed galaxy taken by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, Cornell University astronomer Bo Peng and colleagues were intrigued to see a blob of light near its outer edge. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Rizzo et al. ![]() SPT0418-47 is gravitationally lensed by a foreground galaxy, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light - a so-called Einstein ring.
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