JWST tracks more than 100 magnified stellar events in the Dragon galaxy
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers identified 104 magnified stellar events in a galaxy known as the Dragon, located around 6.5 billion light-years away. This discovery more than doubles the previous record of 44 such detections in the same galaxy. Because these kinds of events reveal some of the most luminous stars and likely the presence of dark matter, this study…
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have identified 104 magnified stellar events in the Dragon galaxy, located around 6.5 billion light-years away. This discovery more than doubles the previous record of 44 such detections in the same galaxy. The light from the Dragon galaxy is stretched and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster called Abell 370, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.
Some regions of the lensing effect are stronger, creating microcaustics where individual stars in the background galaxy can temporarily merge and reach maximum brightness. These stellar events, called caustic crossing events (CCEs), are brief and can only be detected by comparing images of the same distorted region taken at different times.
This study offers a rare look at the galaxy's stellar population and provides a possible hint at the nature of dark matter.
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