A Christmas Tree and Mothra

An early gift given to us by NASA for the festive season , the Christmas tree is a pair of colliding Galaxy captured captured by both Webb and Hubble combined data , it's probably one of the most colourful images NASA have released but the bonus of the picture is the mass of the cluster is such that it has created a gravitational lens to reveal objects far far further in the distance , in this case the main attraction was revealed (red streak centre) as Mothra a Super Giant monster Star that existed about 3 billion years after the (theorised) big bang.

Full image

The other streaks are other Stars and Galaxies which is why the image was created ,

While the new Webb observations contribute to this aesthetic view, they were taken for a specific scientific purpose. The research team combined their three epochs of observations, each taken weeks apart, with a fourth epoch from the CANUCS (CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey) research team. The goal was to search for objects varying in observed brightness over time, known as transients.

They identified 14 such transients across the field of view. Twelve of those transients were located in three galaxies that are highly magnified by gravitational lensing, and are likely to be individual stars or multiple-star systems that are briefly very highly magnified. The remaining two transients are within more moderately magnified background galaxies and are likely to be supernovae.

“We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. We can see transients everywhere,” said Haojing Yan of the University of Missouri in Columbia, lead author of one paper describing the scientific results.

Among the transients the team identified, one stood out in particular. Located in a galaxy that existed about 3 billion years after the big bang, it is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000. The team nicknamed the star system “Mothra” in a nod to its “monster nature,” being both extremely bright and extremely magnified. It joins another lensed star the researchers previously identified that they nicknamed “Godzilla.” (Both Godzilla and Mothra are giant monsters known as kaiju in Japanese cinema.)

Interestingly, Mothra is also visible in the Hubble observations that were taken nine years previously. This is unusual, because a very specific alignment between the foreground galaxy cluster and the background star is needed to magnify a star so greatly. The mutual motions of the star and the cluster should have eventually eliminated that alignment.
www.nasa.gov...

So many Galaxies such a small area.

a reply to: gortex

Taking about Mothra, the new GODZILLA movie reboot , GODZILLA MINUS ONE.is scheduled for release on December l as the big lizard romps and stomps the Land of the Raising Sun

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: gortex

Thank you for posting this beautiful photo! It’s amazing what life looks like in the distance.

a reply to: gortex

A great thread as always Gortex.

The full picture is beautiful and it's good to see an image from the combining of a Hubble and Webb image.

I could stare at that image for hours letting my imagination run with the possibilities of what life could exist in all that light!
Thanks, as always, for posting!

a reply to: gortex

Excellent post, thank you for sharing.

The two things that absolutely astound me are; one, we are looking at many spiral galaxes that are truly massive on their own, containing tremendous amounts of smaller celestial objects. Two, the size of the massive stars identified, or more specifically, the brilliance of said stars relative to entire galaxies. Mind boggling.

Someone may have to correct me if assuming that the cluster of objects in the image share the same relative distance from the earth, and thus can have their respective sizes compared. As I type this, I am thinking this is an accurate way to perceive this.

a reply to: EndTime

Someone may have to correct me if assuming that the cluster of objects in the image share the same relative distance from the earth, and thus can have their respective sizes compared. As I type this, I am thinking this is an accurate way to perceive this.

The stars vary in size and light output so could well be a few hundred lightyears apart from each other , it is hard to read that from a 2D picture.

Not sure if that is the right answer to your question.

a reply to: EndTime

I believe so , there will be distance between them but as they are a cluster I assume they travel together , there's about 2.5 million light-years between our Galaxy and Andromeda yet are some point in the future we will merge.

We are little things pretending to look at things bigger than ourselves. Our objective reality in terms of what we see is so much smaller than what we detect and know exist. It truly is depressing.

That image looks like the inside of a Human brain when all of the Neurons are Firing .

Yep I'm pretty sure the Universe is literally the mind of God and we are living directly inside of Gods mind.

We are in the ALL and the ALL is in us.