NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the image of a red supergiant star, called ‘Quyllur’, observed more than 1,000 million light-years from Earth, making it the first time that a star has been sighted. of these features in distant galaxies.
As reported this Friday by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), this finding was possible due to the infrared filters and the sensitivity provided by Webb, greater than that of Hubble, which had previously provided images of red supergiants closer to Earth and with less definition.
The study, led by the CSIC researcher at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA) in the Advanced Cosmology and Instrumentation Group, José María Diego, has just been published in the journal ‘Astronomy
In fact, Diego assured, “‘Quyllur’ is the first red supergiant found at cosmological distances. It is almost impossible to see lensed red giant stars except in the infrared. This is the first we found with Webb, but we hope there are many further”.
This finding joins the first observations made by a team from the University of Arizona, in which the Spanish researcher participated, where distant and dusty objects were sighted inside the cluster of galaxies known as ‘El Gordo’ until now. unknown and that will provide new scientific data.
‘El Gordo’ is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old, making it a “cosmic adolescent”, according to the researcher.
In addition, the scientists identified five galaxies that appear to be a very young galaxy cluster that formed around 12.1 billion years ago, as well as very faint, blob-like galaxies known as ultra-diffuse galaxies. These objects, which are scattered throughout the ‘El Gordo’ cluster, have their stars widely distributed throughout space and their light traveled 7.2 billion years to reach Earth.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s leading space science observatory and international program run by NASA with its partners: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
