NASA has made a "groundbreaking discovery" of over 40 ancient stars in a distant galaxy.
Through NASA's Webb Telescope, researchers were able to use gravitational lensing to identify 44 stars in the distant galaxy of "Dragon Arc."
According to ESAWebb.org, "Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body -- such as a galaxy cluster -- causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent, as if by a lens." This makes the celestial bodies appear closer and more visible than they really are -- which is how researchers were able to spot the individual stars.
"This groundbreaking discovery demonstrates, for the first time, that studying large numbers of individual stars in a distant galaxy is possible," said postdoctoral researcher Fengwu Sun, a co-author of the study.
Not only that, but scientists can further identify and explore the types of stars present in different galaxies. For example, some of the most prevalent stars were red supergiants, which are some of the largest stars in the Universe -- sometimes thousands of times larger than the sun.
"While previous studies with the Hubble Space Telescope found around seven stars, we now have the capability to resolve stars that were previously outside of our capability," Sun continued. "Importantly, observing more individual stars will also help us better understand dark matter in the lensing plane of these galaxies and stars, which we couldn't do with only the handful of individual stars observed previously."
This research -- and future similar research -- will help scientists better understand how the universe was formed.