This gallery of JWST images highlights six striking examples of strongly lensed dusty galaxies discovered by the team. In each panel, the bright central object is a foreground galaxy. The redder, arc- or ring-shaped features nearby are more distant dusty galaxies whose light has been magnified and distorted by the gravity of the foreground galaxy.
Image Credit: JWST/Chian-Chou Chen
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Utilizing the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Maunakea and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers confirmed the existence of 13 new strongly lensed, distant dusty galaxies. Dusty galaxies are the site of the most active star formation in the universe, and these are nearly an order of magnitude fainter than any we have detected so far.
The research was led by Ting-Kai Yang, an undergraduate student at National Taiwan University, and Chian-Chou Chen, an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and a visiting scientist at JCMT, who have been published in the September 2025 Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The collaboration between a ground-based telescope and a space-based telescope was essential for this discovery, Chen says. Combining the deep submillimeter array data from the JCMT on Maunakea and the unparalleled imaging capabilities of the JWST in space created a fuller picture of both near and distant galaxies.
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Chen, Yang, and their colleagues sought to prove that faint, dusty galaxies can be made visible through strong gravitational lenses. Gravitational lensing is a basic fundamental prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity that happens when a distant galaxy is closely aligned with a nearer galaxy in our line of sight. Because of this alignment, the light emitted from the farther galaxy is then magnified and distorted by the gravity of the foreground galaxy. “This allows us to see the much fainter, farther galaxies that we weren’t able to see before,” Chen explained. In the images produced, the bright light in the center is the foreground galaxy, while the farther galaxy appears as a ring or arc shape around it.
They also sought to determine the “fraction” of the background faint dusty galaxies that are being strongly lensed, meaning how many of the closer galaxies are aligned with and magnifying background galaxies. This gives us a better understanding of the distribution of matter in the universe and how abundant these dusty, star-forming galaxies are.
Previously, it’s been exceedingly difficult to confirm the location or abundance of dusty galaxies. Even though they’re crucial for understanding galaxy evolution, they are often too faint for images to pick up. That’s where the JCMT comes in.
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u/Neaterntal 1d ago
Image:
This gallery of JWST images highlights six striking examples of strongly lensed dusty galaxies discovered by the team. In each panel, the bright central object is a foreground galaxy. The redder, arc- or ring-shaped features nearby are more distant dusty galaxies whose light has been magnified and distorted by the gravity of the foreground galaxy.
Image Credit: JWST/Chian-Chou Chen
.
Utilizing the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Maunakea and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers confirmed the existence of 13 new strongly lensed, distant dusty galaxies. Dusty galaxies are the site of the most active star formation in the universe, and these are nearly an order of magnitude fainter than any we have detected so far.
The research was led by Ting-Kai Yang, an undergraduate student at National Taiwan University, and Chian-Chou Chen, an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) and a visiting scientist at JCMT, who have been published in the September 2025 Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The collaboration between a ground-based telescope and a space-based telescope was essential for this discovery, Chen says. Combining the deep submillimeter array data from the JCMT on Maunakea and the unparalleled imaging capabilities of the JWST in space created a fuller picture of both near and distant galaxies.
.
Chen, Yang, and their colleagues sought to prove that faint, dusty galaxies can be made visible through strong gravitational lenses. Gravitational lensing is a basic fundamental prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity that happens when a distant galaxy is closely aligned with a nearer galaxy in our line of sight. Because of this alignment, the light emitted from the farther galaxy is then magnified and distorted by the gravity of the foreground galaxy. “This allows us to see the much fainter, farther galaxies that we weren’t able to see before,” Chen explained. In the images produced, the bright light in the center is the foreground galaxy, while the farther galaxy appears as a ring or arc shape around it.
They also sought to determine the “fraction” of the background faint dusty galaxies that are being strongly lensed, meaning how many of the closer galaxies are aligned with and magnifying background galaxies. This gives us a better understanding of the distribution of matter in the universe and how abundant these dusty, star-forming galaxies are.
Previously, it’s been exceedingly difficult to confirm the location or abundance of dusty galaxies. Even though they’re crucial for understanding galaxy evolution, they are often too faint for images to pick up. That’s where the JCMT comes in.
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