File:Seeing Triple (Annotated) (52719827555).jpg

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Description	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. The inset images show close-ups of each of the three white boxes that are highlighted. The gravitational lens has created three lensed images of the background galaxy, which are not uniform in size, position or age. Because mass in the galaxy cluster is distributed unevenly, rays of light emitted by the supernova are bent by the lens in different amounts, and so they take longer or shorter paths to the viewer — resulting in separate images. The light that took the longest path gives us the oldest image of the galaxy, in which the supernova is still visible. (Middle, with the supernova labeled as AT 2022riv) The next image is of the galaxy as it appears roughly 320 days later than the first one, and the last image roughly 1000 days after the first. At both later points in time, the supernova has already faded from view. 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. On the right side are three inset images, each corresponding to one of the small white boxed highlighted views of the lensed galaxy. In the middle is the oldest image, which has multiple light sources in it which are depicted here as white and orange. A small orange dot is labeled AT 2022riv; this is the super nova. The bottom box has light that is 320 days older and there are 3 light sources. The top box is about 1000 days older than the middle image. There are two light sources here.
Date	24 February 2023, 19:33
Source	Seeing Triple (Annotated)
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@N03/52719827555. 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.

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Source	ESA/Webb
Credit/Provider	ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Kelly
Short title	Seeing Triple (Annotated)
Image title	This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy, all of which were created by a colossal gravitational lens. 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. This annotated image of the cluster highlights the three images of the lensed galaxy, including the one where the supernova was detected. 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 gravitational lens has created three lensed images of the background galaxy, which are not uniform in size, position or age. Because mass in the galaxy cluster is distributed unevenly, rays of light emitted by the supernova are bent by the lens in different amounts, and so they take longeror shorter paths to the viewer — resulting in separate images. The light that took the longest path gives us the oldest image of the galaxy, in which the supernova is still visible. The next image is of the galaxy as it appears roughly 320 days later than the first one, and the last image roughly1000 days after the first. At both later points in time, the supernova has already faded from view. The name for the transient is AT 2022riv. 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:The main image shows a large elliptical galaxy, surrounded by many small similar galaxies in a cluster, and background stars and galaxies. Three smaller pull-outs show three lensed images of a background galaxy, close up.] Links Pan of Seeing Triple Zoom of Seeing Triple
Usage terms	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Date and time of data generation	06:00, 28 February 2023
JPEG file comment	This observation from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope contains three different images of the same supernova-hosting galaxy, all of which were created by a colossal gravitational lens. 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. This annotated image of the cluster highlights the three images of the lensed galaxy, including the one where the supernova was detected. 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: The main image shows a large elliptical galaxy, surrounded by many small similar galaxies in a cluster, and background stars and galaxies. Three smaller pull-outs show three lensed images of a background galaxy, close up. One is labelled “1003 days earlier”, one has a small star marked out as “AT 2022riv”, and one is labelled “322 days earlier”.]
Software used	Adobe Photoshop 24.1 (Windows)
File change date and time	19:33, 24 February 2023
Date and time of digitizing	16:53, 26 January 2023
Date metadata was last modified	20:33, 24 February 2023
Unique ID of original document	xmp.did:debd889f-16fb-544d-9e83-f97ccf51d820
Keywords	RX J2129.6+0005
Contact information	https://esawebb.org ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr Baltimore, MD, 21218 United States
IIM version	4

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