- NASA will study the formation of new stars under a program called Targeting Extremely Magnified Panchromatic Lensed Arcs and Their Extended Star Formation, or TEMPLATES.
- The program has four main goals: a) Measure how many new stars are forming, to determine how rapidly galaxies form stars, b) Map the star-formation rate in four selected galaxies, c) Compare the young and old stellar populations and d) Measure the conditions of the gas within these galaxies
- The study will be conducted using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists would take help of a natural phenomenon call gravitational lensing which would magnify the light from distant galaxies that are at or near the peak of star formation.
- Gravitational lenses are considered to be natural, cosmic telescopes. The phenomenon occurs when a huge amount of matter, such as a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies, creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from objects behind it.
- The effect allows researchers to study the details of early galaxies too far away to be seen otherwise with even the most powerful space telescopes.
