Ji FuGnuastro: Two lensed star candidates from 12.56 billion years imaged with JWST
Two unique features of GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro), "NoiseChisel" and "Segment," assisted in a recent scientific achievement: photometry (measurements of the flux of astronomical objects) of the second most distant resolved stars behind the gravitational lens of a large intermediate galaxy cluster by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is currently the largest optical telescope in space. The observed photons from these stars were emitted 12.56 billion years ago (when the universe was only 1.23 billion years old). Mentioned in Section 4.2 of the article published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters published by the American Astronomical Society, it was thanks to the unique features of Gnuastro that they were able to do the photometry and properly identify them as very distant stars.
Special thanks to the maintainer of Gnuastro, Mohammad Akhlaghi, for sharing the article for inclusion in this month's Supporter and for providing valuable scientific context.
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