Tag Archive for 'MACS J1206.2-0847'

This Hubble image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ 1206. Embedded within the cluster are the distorted images of distant background galaxies, seen as arcs and smeared features. These distortions are caused by the dark matter in the cluster, whose gravity bends and magnifies the light from faraway galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows astronomers to study remote galaxies that would otherwise be too faint to see. Overlaid on the image are small-scale concentrations of dark matter, represented in this artist’s impression in blue. Dark matter is the invisible glue that keeps stars bound together inside a galaxy and makes up the bulk of the matter in the Universe. These blue halos reflect how the galaxy cluster’s dark matter is distributed, revealed by new results from Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / G. Caminha, University of Groningen / M. Meneghetti, Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science of Bologna / P. Natarajan, Yale University / CLASH Team / M. Kornmesser.

New Observations Suggest Missing Ingredient in Current Dark Matter Theories

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

The large mass of a galaxy cluster deflects light from background objects, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The large-scale gravitational lens...

The ‘Cosmic Snake’ galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Cosmic Snake

Nov 20, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the ‘Cosmic Snake’ galaxy, an extremely distant galaxy peppered with clumpy regions of intense...