Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgement: N. Rose
This Hubble image shows the galaxy cluster Abell S1077. Galaxy
clusters are large groupings of galaxies, each of them including
millions of stars. They are the largest existing structures in the
Universe to be held together by their gravity.
The amount of matter condensed in such groupings is so high that
their gravity is enough to warp the fabric of spacetime, distorting the
path that light takes when it travels through the cluster. In some
cases, this phenomenon produces an effect somewhat like a magnifying
lens, allowing us to see objects that are aligned behind the cluster and
which would otherwise be undetectable from Earth. In this image, you
see stretched stripes that look like scratches on a lens but are, in
fact, galaxies whose light is heavily distorted by the gravitational
field of the cluster.
Astronomers use tools like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and
the effects of gravitational lensing to peer far back in time and space
to see the furthest objects located in the early Universe. One of the
record holders is MACS0647-JD, a galaxy seen by Hubble
and the Spitzer Space Telescope with the help of a gravitational lens
much like this one in the galaxy cluster MACS J0647.7+7015. Its light
has taken 13.3 billion years to reach us.
This image is based in part on data spotted by Nick Rose in the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition.
Source: ESA/Hubble - Space Telescope
