"The JWST era continues to show us the Universe as never before. Its recently completed COSMOS-Web survey provides our deepest wide-field views ever. Revealing a whopping 780,000+ galaxies, some would inevitably be co-aligned with background objects. Massive objects, like foreground galaxies, gravitationally distort any light traveling along their line-of-sight. This leads to the phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing: magnifying, distorting, and creating multiple images of background sources."
"Many impressive gravitational lenses have been viewed with JWST before. But the large, deep COSMOS-Web survey was predicted to yield 107 new gravitational lenses. Indeed, ~400 lensing candidates were identified, and the 17 most spectacular are already confirmed. Among them are the incredible COSMOS-Web ring, dated at a cosmic age of just 1 billion years. It isn't just giant elliptical galaxies that make lenses, but even edge-on spiral galaxies. Many lenses showcase multiply-imaged background galaxies, pearl-like lights within a lensed ring,"
"arcing, tadpole-like shapes, plus other attention-grabbing features. An eight-lens COSMOS-Web composite was named the European Space Agency's picture of the month. Over 100 of COSMOS-Web's lens candidates are likely to be physically real gravitational lenses. The observed brightnesses of these lensed systems are greater than expected: a scientific puzzle to be solved. Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words."
The COSMOS-Web JWST survey delivered the deepest wide-field near-infrared images to date, detecting over 780,000 galaxies. Gravitational distortion by massive foreground objects produced numerous strong-lensing configurations. Roughly 400 lensing candidates were identified, with 17 spectacular systems confirmed, including a ringed source from when the Universe was about one billion years old. Lenses include both giant ellipticals and edge-on spirals, producing multiply imaged galaxies, rings, arcs, and tadpole-like shapes. More than 100 candidates are likely real gravitational lenses. Many lensed systems appear brighter than predicted, posing a scientific puzzle requiring follow-up analysis.
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