Credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)
Acknowledgment: J. Lotz (STScI) and the HFF team
Two massive galaxy clusters — Abell S1063 (left) and MACS J0416.1-2403 (right) — display a soft blue haze, called intracluster light, embedded among innumerable galaxies. The intracluster light is produced by orphan stars that no longer belong to any single galaxy, having been thrown loose during a violent galaxy interaction, and now drift freely throughout the cluster of galaxies. Astronomers have found that intracluster light closely matches with a map of mass distribution in the cluster's overall gravitational field. This makes the blue "ghost light" a good indicator of how invisible dark matter is distributed in the cluster. Dark matter is a key missing link in our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe. Abell S1063 and MACS J0416.1-2403 were the strongest examples of intracluster light providing a much better match to the cluster's mass map than X-ray light, which has been used in the past to trace dark matter. Release Images
A new look at Hubble images of galaxies could be a step toward
illuminating the elusive nature of dark matter, the unobservable
material that makes up the majority of the universe, according to a
study published online today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Utilizing Hubble's past observations of six massive galaxy clusters in the Frontier Fields program,
astronomers demonstrated that intracluster light — the diffuse glow
between galaxies in a cluster — traces the path of dark matter,
illuminating its distribution more accurately than existing methods that
observe X-ray light.
Intracluster light is the byproduct of interactions between galaxies
that disrupt their structures; in the chaos, individual stars are thrown
free of their gravitational moorings in their home galaxy to realign
themselves with the gravity map of the overall cluster. This is also
where the vast majority of dark matter resides. X-ray light indicates
where groups of galaxies are colliding, but not the underlying structure
of the cluster. This makes it a less precise tracer of dark matter.
"The reason that intracluster light is such an excellent tracer of
dark matter in a galaxy cluster is that both the dark matter and these
stars forming the intracluster light are free-floating on the
gravitational potential of the cluster itself—so they are following
exactly the same gravity," said Mireia Montes of the University of New
South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who is co-author of the study. "We
have found a new way to see the location where the dark matter should
be, because you are tracing exactly the same gravitational potential. We
can illuminate, with a very faint glow, the position of dark matter."
Montes also highlights that not only is the method accurate, but it
is more efficient in that it utilizes only deep imaging, rather than the
more complex, time-intensive techniques of spectroscopy. This means
more clusters and objects in space can be studied in less time — meaning
more potential evidence of what dark matter consists of and how it
behaves.
"This method puts us in the position to characterize, in a statistical way, the ultimate nature of dark matter," Montes said.
"The idea for the study was sparked while looking at the pristine
Hubble Frontier Field images," said study co-author Ignacio Trujillo of
the Canary Islands Institute of Astronomy in Tenerife, Spain, who along
with Montes had studied intracluster light for years. "The Hubble
Frontier Fields showed intracluster light in unprecedented clarity. The
images were inspiring," Trujillo said. "Still, I did not expect the
results to be so precise. The implications for future space-based
research are very exciting."
"The astronomers used the Modified Hausdorff Distance (MHD), a metric
used in shape matching, to measure the similarities between the
contours of the intracluster light and the contours of the different
mass maps of the clusters, which are provided as part of the data from
the Hubble Frontier Fields project, housed in the Mikulski Archive for
Space Telescopes (MAST). The MHD is a measure of how far two subsets are
from each other. The smaller the value of MHD, the more similar the two
point sets are. This analysis showed that the intracluster light
distribution seen in the Hubble Frontier Fields images matched the mass
distribution of the six galaxy clusters better than did X-ray emission,
as derived from archived observations from Chandra X-ray Observatory's
Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS).
Beyond this initial study, Montes and Trujillo see multiple
opportunities to expand their research. To start, they would like to
increase the radius of observation in the original six clusters, to see
if the degree of tracing accuracy holds up. Another important test of
their method will be observation and analysis of additional galaxy
clusters by more research teams, to add to the data set and confirm
their findings.
The astronomers also look forward to the application of the same
techniques with future powerful space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope and WFIRST, which will have even more sensitive instruments for resolving faint intracluster light in the distant universe.
Trujillo would like to test scaling down the method from massive
galaxy clusters to single galaxies. "It would be fantastic to do this at
galactic scales, for example exploring the stellar halos. In principal
the same idea should work; the stars that surround the galaxy as a
result of the merging activity should also be following the
gravitational potential of the galaxy, illuminating the location and
distribution of dark matter."
The Hubble Frontier Fields program was a deep imaging initiative
designed to utilize the natural magnifying glass of galaxy clusters'
gravity to see the extremely distant galaxies beyond them, and thereby
gain insight into the early (distant) universe and the evolution of
galaxies since that time. In that study the diffuse intracluster light
was an annoyance, partially obscuring the distant galaxies beyond.
However, that faint glow could end up shedding significant light on one
of astronomy's great mysteries: the nature of dark matter.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space
Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts
Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association
of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
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Contacts
Leah Ramsay / Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
667-218-6439 / 410-338-4514
lramsay@stsci.edu / villard@stsci.edu
Mireia Montes
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
mireia.montes.quiles@gmail.com
Related Links
This site is not responsible for content found on external links
- The science paper by M. Montes and I. Trujillo
- NASA's Hubble Portal
- Frontier Fields (STScI Archived Blog)
- Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields Portal
- Hubble-Europe's Release
Contacts
Leah Ramsay / Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
667-218-6439 / 410-338-4514
lramsay@stsci.edu / villard@stsci.edu
Mireia Montes
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
mireia.montes.quiles@gmail.com
Source: HubbleSite/News
