James Webb telescope reveals ‘cosmic house of mirrors’ galaxy cluster

By Dean Murray

Space scientists have unveiled a "cosmic house of mirrors" in which galaxies appear warped.

The ESA (European Space Agency) has revealed an example of gravitational lensing, in which enormous celestial objects bend and magnify light from a more distant object in the background.

ESA said on Tuesday, Sept. 29, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month shows "brilliant golden galaxies" in a galaxy cluster called MACS J0454.1-0300.

They wrote: "The orange galaxies concentrated on one side of the cluster are not actually part of the cluster and are much farther away from us.

"MACS J0454.1-0300 is itself immensely distant: the light from these galaxies has been traveling to us for so long that we're seeing the cluster as it was when the universe was about 8 billion years old.

"While this galaxy cluster is a valuable scientific target in its own right, the real stars of this image are the galaxies that appear warped and stretched, like a painting that has been smeared by a giant hand."

Gravitational lensing allows astronomers to observe galaxies, star clusters and even individual stars that are too far away for our telescopes to see under normal conditions.

The gravitationally lensed areas in the image show multiple images of galaxies from when the Universe was young: a group of galaxies 2 billion years after the Big Bang, and a single galaxy just 800 million years old after the Big Bang.

ESA said: "The galaxy group appears to be going through a merger, resulting in an enormous burst of star formation."