‘Cause I’m just a teenage dustbag, baby
NASAWebb has captured a new image of a "teenage galactic cluster" known as El Gordo — and it's revealing distant and dusty objects never before seen. El Gordo existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old which means it’s in its teens (and knows everything).
It’s the most massive cluster of its era and doubles as a natural magnifying glass through a phenomena called gravitational lensing – its powerful gravity bends and distorts light of objects lying behind it, much like an eyeglass lens.
In the second image, take a closer look at two of the background galaxies magnified by El Gordo:
- The long thin line in Box A is known as La Flaca. Webb used its extreme infrared sensitivity to spot a red giant star within, the first star of this type observed beyond 1 billion light-years from Earth.
- The bright arc in Box B is El Anzuelo, or The Fishhook. Light from this galaxy took 10.6 billion years to reach Earth.
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