All articles tagged with #gravitational lensing
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching from Kennedy Space Center, will map hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies with a wide infrared view, search for up to 200,000 exoplanets via transits and microlensing, and probe dark matter and dark energy through weak gravitational lensing—potentially addressing key cosmological tensions and expanding our understanding of the universe.
Researchers propose that some IceCube neutrino detections are magnified by gravitational lensing from a dark-matter filament deflecting emissions from the blazar PKS 2233-148, a finding that could sharpen our view of how neutrinos are produced and the black hole at a blazar’s core.
Astronomers report that the jet from a distant blazar (PKS 2233-148) is being gravitationally lensed by an unseen dark-matter clump, temporarily magnifying the jet and potentially aiding the search for high-energy neutrino sources; the finding, supported by VLBA, Fermi, and Swift observations and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offers a first hint that dark-matter substructure can produce lensing effects in relativistic cosmic jets.
Astronomers modeling a diffuse reservoir of water vapor around the gravitationally lensed quasar APM 08279+5255 (redshift 3.91) report an inventory equivalent to about 140 trillion times Earth’s oceans, and a total water mass around 100,000 solar masses; the figure is model-dependent and hinges on lens magnification, gas excitation by infrared radiation, and the assumed molecular-gas mass. The detection relies on multiple water emission lines rather than a direct image or measurement of liquid water, and places water in the environment of a feeding supermassive black hole when the universe was about 1.6 billion years old, roughly 12 billion years in light-travel time. The result highlights water as a tracer of physical conditions in the early universe and underscores the uncertainties introduced by gravitational lensing.
Astronomers using JWST/NIRCam data from the RELICS program identified a bright, elongated gravitational arc behind the galaxy cluster MACS J0308.9+2645 (A1). Initial analysis suggested a redshift around z~4.4 with a magnification of ~7, placing it in the universe’s first billion years, but corrected photometry indicates a lower redshift near z~1.4, and a second, fainter candidate (A2) was found. The result implies many more early-universe galaxies may lie in Webb’s public data, and it underscores the need for independent verification and updated lens models due to potential photometry biases for extended sources.
Ten recent space discoveries—ranging from neon hints of Mars’ recent volcanism and the mature early galaxy Zhúlóng seen by JWST, to newborn planets around PDS 70 and a possible fifth world near L 98-59—demonstrate how JWST and Hubble are reshaping our understanding of planet formation, galaxy evolution, and cosmic history, while prompting new views on the Milky Way–Andromeda fate and the Sun’s distant future.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed XLSSC 122, a massive galaxy cluster seen as it was about 10.4 billion years ago (roughly 3.4 billion years after the Big Bang). The cluster is unusually evolved, and it serves as a gravitational lens that magnifies distant background galaxies, making XLSSC 122 the most distant cluster observed with strong lensing. This finding could prompt revisions to theories of early structure formation and offers a new way to study dark matter’s distribution. The team presented their results at the 2026 American Astronomical Society meeting, highlighting JWST’s power to probe the distant universe and the potential discovery of many similar lensing clusters in the early cosmos.
A high-energy neutrino detected by IceCube may have originated from Shadow Blaster, a dust-enshrouded, intensely star-forming galaxy 11 billion light-years away that is gravitationally lensed. This link, while tentative (about 1% chance of a random coincidence), suggests star-forming galaxies could contribute a significant fraction of the diffuse neutrino background, and motivates deeper multiwavelength follow-up with facilities like ALMA and JWST to pinpoint more such sources.
JWST’s view of XLSSC 122, a galaxy cluster at z=1.98 (~10.4 billion light-years away), shows background galaxies lensed into arcs, enabling a map of the cluster’s dense inner mass. The unusually concentrated core for its cosmic noon era points to merger-driven growth, and XLSSC 122 also acts as a natural telescope, magnifying even more distant galaxies to probe dark matter and structure formation.
Astronomers trace a high-energy neutrino detected by IceCube to Shadow Blaster, a dust-rich, strongly gravitationally lensed star-forming galaxy about 11 billion light-years away. This marks the first direct link between a single dusty galaxy and a high-energy neutrino, suggesting such galaxies can be significant sources of cosmic neutrinos and could contribute up to ~20% of the diffuse neutrino background; the finding, published in Nature Astronomy, relied on observations from JCMT, SMA, ALMA, and Gemini to map the galaxy’s dense, star-forming core and its lensing mass.
South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope detected the most distant hydroxyl megamaser yet observed—in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away—thanks to gravitational lensing and wide bandwidth. The rapid 5-hour detection showcases MeerKAT's capabilities and foreshadows many more such discoveries with the SKA and ngVLA, offering new insights into galaxy evolution and extreme star-forming environments in the early universe.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope and gravitational lensing, astronomers tracked the motion of stars at the heart of the galaxy MRG-M0138 (about 10 billion light-years away) to weigh a dormant supermassive black hole of roughly 6 billion solar masses—the most distant black hole weighed by this method. The host galaxy is no longer forming stars, suggesting a past quasar phase that expelled gas and quenched star formation. The study, published in Science, helps chart how black holes and their galaxies grow and influence each other over cosmic time.
The James Webb Space Telescope identified the most distant dormant black hole in a galaxy more than 10 billion light-years away (MRG-M0138), with a mass of about six billion solar masses. Because the black hole is not accreting, it’s invisible across wavelengths; researchers measured its mass by tracking the motions of stars around it, aided by gravitational lensing that magnified the system. The finding helps illuminate black hole growth in the early universe and how such black holes influence galaxy evolution, with future surveys like Euclid and the Roman Space Telescope expected to find more of these objects.
Using JWST’s observations of Abell2744-QSO1, scientists directly measured a central black hole of about 50 million solar masses that accounts for roughly 66% of the object's mass just 700 million years after the Big Bang. The finding implies the black hole formed before its host galaxy, challenging traditional growth models that rely on stellar remnants and suggesting a heavy-seed or direct-collapse origin for early supermassive black holes.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope measured a 50-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole in Abell2744-QSO1, a system just 700 million years after the Big Bang, whose mass is unusually large for its tiny host and appears to predate its galaxy. The direct mass measurement, enabled by JWST’s NIRSpec and strong gravitational lensing by Abell 2744, challenges standard growth models and local scaling relations, prompting a paradigm shift in how black holes form and grow. Findings are published in Nature and MNRAS.