In the first color photograph taken by the James Webb Space Telescope and shared today, many people’s attention was drawn to the crooked appearance of galaxies. This was not a problem with the telescope’s lens. So what was it? Let’s take a closer look at one of the surprising phenomena of our nature.
While humanity is advancing at full speed to explore the unknowns in the depths of space, an important sharing that will go down in space history was made last night. NASA sent it into space after years of delay of the James Webb Space Telescope He shared the first color image he took with the world.
In that photograph belonging to the SMACS 0723 cluster, where many galaxies can be observed at the same time, there were stars and galaxies in every area that the eye could see. This photograph, which reminds us of the eternity of the universe and our smallness, is also A phenomenon that has caught the attention of many. He also had: Some galaxies appeared crooked, as if they had entered an invisible gravitational field, especially in the middle of the photo. So what was the reason for this?
Why do galaxies appear bent?
In the image above taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the galaxies in the marked area appear crooked, ‘gravitational lensingIt is caused by a condition called ‘. Let’s take a closer look at this situation, which is one of the predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and has been proven many times with photographs.
Every object in space has a mass, and this mass of objects can bend the space and time around it. Due to this bending, you can actually see any of the observed objects in the image below. actual position of the objectaccording to its position reflected in our eye and telescope lenses It may be different. The first proof of this was provided by Arthur Eddington and Frank Watson Dyson during the 1919 Solar Eclipse, when they observed that the light coming from stars passing very close to the Sun is bent.
According to the general theory of relativity, light also follows these curves that occur in space-time. Therefore, when light passes around a massive object, it is bent due to the bending of space-time by the effect of that object. The journey of light through twisted space, to humanity The chance to observe celestial objects that are hidden behind other objects and that are very far away. can give. An example of this situation can be explained with the image below:
In addition, this situation can cause other structures behind the massive structures to appear more than once. For example, in the image below, a quasar, which is actually behind a giant galaxy, is due to the bending of the light it emits. It can appear as separate celestial bodies in four different places.
Therefore, the new image, which is the clearest image of the distant universe ever taken, clearly shows the effect of gravitational lensing. Some of the galaxies that we would not be able to see without this effect have the potential to be one of the oldest galaxies. Of course, these galaxies billions of years ago We must also take into account what we see.
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