JWST - "G/Lensed" Distant Galaxy + RED Giant star

[Macavity]

Plopped onto Browser - Even skimmed through some of the papers. 😛
https://www.space.com/james-webb-telescope-einstein-general-relativity-galaxy-warps

But, from a (totally) non-expert perspective, it is interesting to *try* to
get some sort of (qualitative) idea, what Researchers DO with this? lol.
Seems like they can *model* the gravitational lens at various locations
& wavelengths? Then "decovolute" the actual parameters of objects? 🤯

Aside: I had not thought about *brightening* objects! - Makes sense, I
suppose? You have a HUGE (gravitational) Objective Lens out there! 😅

Edited August 3, 2023 by Macavity

[saac]

Are they effectively using the gravitational lensing as a telescope !

Jim 

[vlaiv]

My first instinct would be to this:

Make a parameteric model of gravitational system (which is just volumetric mass/energy density) that sits somewhere along the light path. Then take image of object that produced gravitationaly lensed image and do some sort of optimization algorithm - to try to get the set of parameters that will produce a match between simulation and what is recorded.

It is really not much different than any data fitting - you collect your data and you "propose" a function / model that produced that data and you perform a fit. Only difference is in degrees of freedom for your model (number of parameters) and algorithm used for fitting.

[Macavity]

Sometimes it's HARDER to work out how to Download the stuff? lol.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.05054.pdf   (It's actually fairly readable!)
Parametric gravitational lens modeling was performed with Lenstool... 😉

Nothing wrong with using existing software? Indeed, there is commonality
in "experimental" Physics? Except, their experiment is rather far away!
Only 30 authors? Postgrad-students get to *name* things?
For a moment, science seemed quite FUN again! 😁

Edited August 4, 2023 by Macavity