Tag

Gravitational Lensing

All articles tagged with #gravitational lensing

space12 days ago•101 min saved

James Webb Spots Ancient Galaxy Cluster Acting as a Cosmic Magnifier

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.

via Space|

#dark-matter #galaxy-cluster #gravitational-lensing

space-science15 days ago•6 min saved

Dusty Galaxy Emerges as Possible Source of Ghost Neutrinos

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.

via CNN|

#gravitational-lensing #icecube #neutrinos

science19 days ago•13 min saved

JWST Reveals Dense Dark-Matter Core in Distant Galaxy Cluster XLSSC 122

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.

via Space Daily|

#cosmic-noon #dark-matter #gravitational-lensing

science23 days ago•97 min saved

Dusty Galaxy Shadow Blaster Pinpoints Home of High-Energy Neutrino

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.

via Space|

#gravitational-lensing #icecube #neutrinos

science1 month ago•7 min saved

MeerKAT spots record-distance hydroxyl megamaser, peering into the early universe

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.

via The Conversation|

#early-universe #gravitational-lensing #hydroxyl-megamaser

space1 month ago•71 min saved

JWST weighs a distant 6-billion-solar-mass black hole in a 10-billion-light-year galaxy

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.

via Space|

#black-hole #gravitational-lensing #james-webb-space-telescope

spacescience1 month ago•86 min saved

JWST uncovers the universe’s farthest dormant black hole, 6 billion solar masses

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.

via Live Science|

#black-holes #early-universe #galaxy-evolution

space1 month ago•74 min saved

JWST Finds Black Hole Born Before Its Galaxy, Challenging Growth Theories

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.

via Space|

#black-holes #early-universe #galaxy-formation

science1 month ago•7 min saved

JWST Discovers a 50-Million-Solar-Mass Black Hole Before Its Galaxy, Upending Growth Theories

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.

via ScienceAlert|

#astronomy #black-holes #early-universe

space1 month ago•91 min saved

Webb reveals a massive black hole dwarfing its tiny host in the early universe

JWST directly measured a ~50 million-solar-mass black hole in the little red dot QSO1, seen when the universe was about 700 million years old, and found it vastly outweighs its host galaxy (host mass < ~20 million solar masses), making it a “naked” black hole. The object is magnified and stretched by gravitational lensing from Abell 2744 (roughly 6x magnification, 3.5x stretch), enabling spectroastrometry with JWST’s NIRSpec to map gas motion and pin down the mass. The result reinforces that local-universe black-hole mass methods can apply to early-universe objects and suggests such seeds could form before their galaxies, though two exotic origin scenarios—direct collapse or primordial black holes—remain on the table.

via Live Science|

#black-holes #gravitational-lensing #james-webb-space-telescope

science1 month ago•2 min saved

Dense Dark Matter Clumps Might Unify Three Cosmic Puzzles

A UC Riverside study proposes that dense clumps of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) can undergo gravothermal collapse to form compact cores that explain three different observations—an ultra-dense object in the gravitational lens JVAS B1938+666, perturbations in the GD-1 stellar stream, and the unusually young, metal-rich Fornax 6 globular cluster in the Fornax dwarf galaxy—linking distant lensing, our Galaxy, and a satellite galaxy under one mechanism, unlike collisionless CDM. The work, published in Physical Review Letters, is supported by the John Templeton Foundation and the DoE.

via Universe Today|

#dark-matter-halos #globular-clusters #gravitational-lensing

astronomy1 month ago•4 min saved

Webb Telescope Spots One of the Earliest Galaxies, Tracing the First Stars

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers captured LAP1-B, one of the universe’s earliest and faint galaxies, dating to about 13 billion years ago (roughly 800 million years after the Big Bang). Gravitational lensing by a foreground cluster amplified its light ~100x, enabling spectroscopy that reveals extremely low metal content and signatures of Population III stars, including a high carbon-to-oxygen ratio. The data also suggest the galaxy sits in a massive dark matter halo, offering critical clues about how the first galaxies formed and evolved in the early cosmos (Nature).

via The Daily Galaxy|

#astronomy #dark-matter #gravitational-lensing

science1 month ago•7 min saved

JWST Finds Pristine Galaxy from Cosmic Dawn via Gravitational Lens

Using JWST and a foreground galaxy cluster to lens the faint object LAP1-B, astronomers observe a tiny, 800-million-year-old galaxy whose glow comes from gas rather than stars. Its extremely low heavy-element content, plus emission from highly ionized carbon, points to fingerprints of the first Population III stars. With stellar mass only a few thousand suns and a dark-matter–dominated halo inferred from gas dynamics, LAP1-B serves as a rare fossil from cosmic dawn, shedding light on early star formation and the pre-reionization era.

via Ars Technica|

#early-universe #gravitational-lensing #james-webb-space-telescope

science2 months ago•6 min saved

Roman Space Telescope Could Weigh Hidden Neutron Stars via Gravitational Microlensing

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could spot and weigh isolated neutron stars in the Milky Way using astrometric microlensing in its Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey; by tracking tiny shifts in background starlight as a neutron star passes in front, Roman can directly measure the masses of otherwise invisible remnants, helping map the neutron star–black hole population and shedding light on neutron-star birth kicks, with even a few detections significantly advancing stellar evolution models.

via NASA (.gov)|

#astrometry #gravitational-lensing #microlensing

space2 months ago•8 min saved

Five-image supernova could pin down the universe’s expansion speed

A rare gravitationally lensed, five-image superluminous supernova called SN Winny (SN 2025wny) offers a direct, one-step method to measure the Hubble constant by timing the delays between the multiple light paths, potentially resolving the universe’s expansion-rate disagreement.

via ScienceDaily|

#cosmology #gravitational-lensing #hubble-constant