Capturing images of individual stars in distant galaxies has generally been considered impossible for decades.
But NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was recently able to do so with the help of gravity.
Gravity always bends space. It’s that curving of space that causes us to feel like we are being pulled toward earth.
Since gravity bends space, light also follows those curves. And when gravity is strong enough, like in clusters of galaxies, it can bend space in such a way that it creates a lensing or magnification effect.
That effect helped capture images of about 40 singular stars in a galaxy called the Dragon Arc, nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth.
Researchers from ASU and the University of Arizona helped publish a study on the magnification effect in the journal Nature Astronomy.
