File:Seeing Triple (52719670994).jpg
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DescriptionSeeing Triple (52719670994).jpg |
Good things come in threes! This Webb image features a special galaxy that appears three times. Why? There's a galaxy cluster here whose mass and gravity are so great that time and space around it gets warped. This magnifies, multiplies, and distorts distant galaxies behind the cluster, such as the one highlighted in the three white boxes. The effect is known as gravitational lensing. The tripled galaxy contains an exploding star, part of a Type Ia (pronounced One-A) supernova. These supernovae have a standard brightness, but this particular galaxy’s supernova has been magnified by the cluster to look closer and brighter. By comparing the standard brightness with how bright this supernova appears to be, we can calculate the true distance of its galaxy. Learn more: esawebb.org/images/potm2302a/ Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Kelly Image description: Stars and galaxies, in shades of white and reddish orange, are scattered across a dark background. Larger stars resemble snowflakes due to their eight-pointed diffraction spike pattern. The galaxies come in an assortment of sizes and shapes: spirals, arcs, blobs and dots. In the upper right corner, there is a foreground galaxy cluster with a diffuse white glow. Behind the cluster are galaxies that have been magnified, distorted and multiplied due to the sheer mass and gravity of the cluster, an effect called gravitational lensing. One of these magnified galaxies is of note to astronomers. It appears three times in the upper right corner, and each of its appearances is highlighted with a small white box. This galaxy looks like a tiny orange spiral. In all three white boxes, there are other tiny orange or white light sources right next to it. |
Date | |
Source | Seeing Triple |
Author | NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from Greenbelt, MD, USA |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by James Webb Space Telescope at https://flickr.com/photos/50785054@N03/52719670994. It was reviewed on 6 June 2023 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0. |
6 June 2023
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Date and time of data generation | 06:00, 28 February 2023 |
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Short title | Seeing Triple |
Credit/Provider | ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Kelly |
Source | ESA/Webb |
Image title | This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the massive galaxy cluster RX J2129. Due to Gravitational lensing, this observation contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy, which you can see in closer detail here. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime to bend the path of light travelling past or through it, almost like a vast lens. In this case, the lens is the galaxy cluster RX J2129, located around 3.2 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Gravitational lensing can cause background objects to appear strangely distorted, as can be seen by the concentric arcs of light in the upper right of this image. Astronomers discovered the supernova in the triply-lensed background galaxy using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and they suspected that they had found a very distant Type Ia supernova. These supernovae always produce a fairly consistent luminosity — at the same distance, one looks as bright as any other — which makes them particularly helpful to astronomers. As their distance from Earth is proportional to how dim they appear in the night sky, objects with known brightness can be used as 'standard candles' to measure astronomical distances. The almost uniform luminosity of a Type Ia supernova could also allow astronomers to understand how strongly the galaxy cluster RX J2129 is magnifying background objects, and therefore how massive the galaxy cluster is. As well as distorting the images of background objects, gravitational lenses can cause distant objects to appear much brighter than they would otherwise. If the gravitational lens magnifies something with a known brightness, such as a Type Ia supernova, then astronomers can use this to measure the ‘prescription’ of the gravitational lens. This observation was captured by Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera to measure the brightness of the lensed |
Publisher | ESA/Webb |
Usage terms |
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JPEG file comment | This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the massive galaxy cluster RX J2129. Due to Gravitational lensing, this observation contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy, which you can see in closer detail here. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime to bend the path of light travelling past or through it, almost like a vast lens. In this case, the lens is the galaxy cluster RX J2129, located around 3.2 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Gravitational lensing can cause background objects to appear strangely distorted, as can be seen by the concentric arcs of light in the upper right of this image. Astronomers discovered the supernova in the triply-lensed background galaxy using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and they suspected that they had found a very distant Type Ia supernova. These supernovae always produce a fairly consistent luminosity — at the same distance, one looks as bright as any other — which makes them particularly helpful to astronomers. As their distance from Earth is proportional to how dim they appear in the night sky, objects with known brightness can be used as 'standard candles' to measure astronomical distances. The almost uniform luminosity of a Type Ia supernova could also allow astronomers to understand how strongly the galaxy cluster RX J2129 is magnifying background objects, and therefore how massive the galaxy cluster is. As well as distorting the images of background objects, gravitational lenses can cause distant objects to appear much brighter than they would otherwise. If the gravitational lens magnifies something with a known brightness, such as a Type Ia supernova, then astronomers can use this to measure the ‘prescription’ of the gravitational lens. This observation was captured by Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera to measure the brightness of the lensed supernova. As part of the same programme, NIRSpec spectroscopy of the supernova was also obtained, which will allow comparison of this distant supernova to Type Ia supernovae in the nearby Universe. This is an important way to verify that one of astronomers’ tried-and-tested methods of measuring vast distances works as expected. [Image description: Stars and galaxies, mostly reddish in colour, are scattered across a dark background. In the foreground upper-right corner, a large elliptical galaxy is surrounded by many smaller similar galaxies in a cluster. These galaxies have bright centres and a diffuse white glow around them. The large galaxy has distorted images and arcs around it.] Links Seeing Triple (Annotated) Pan of Seeing Triple Zoom of Seeing Triple |
Orientation | Normal |
Horizontal resolution | 25.4 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 25.4 dpi |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop 24.1 (Windows) |
File change date and time | 04:32, 20 February 2023 |
Y and C positioning | Centered |
Exif version | 2.32 |
Date and time of digitizing | 15:53, 26 January 2023 |
Meaning of each component |
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Supported Flashpix version | 1 |
Color space | Uncalibrated |
IIM version | 4 |
Keywords | RX J2129.6+0005 |
Bits per component |
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Compression scheme | Uncompressed |
Height | 3,501 px |
Width | 4,377 px |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Number of components | 3 |
Contact information |
ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr Baltimore, MD, 21218 United States |
Type of media | Observation |
Date metadata was last modified | 05:32, 20 February 2023 |
Unique ID of original document | xmp.did:debd889f-16fb-544d-9e83-f97ccf51d820 |