See a Glittering Gang of Galaxies in This Hubble Picture

This packed picture taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope showcases the galaxy cluster ACO S 295, in addition to a jostling crowd of background galaxies and foreground stars. Galaxies of all sizes and styles populate this picture, starting from stately spirals to fuzzy ellipticals. This galactic menagerie boasts a variety of orientations and sizes, with spiral galaxies such because the one on the middle of this picture showing nearly face on, and a few edge-on spiral galaxies seen solely as skinny slivers of sunshine. ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Pacaud, D. Coe

This week’s Hubble picture exhibits a glittering host of galaxies of all sizes and styles. Dominating the picture is the galaxy cluster ACO S 295, positioned 3.5 billion light-years away within the constellation of Horologium.

Galaxy clusters are nearly unfathomably giant, and actually, are the biggest objects within the universe held collectively by gravity. They sometimes include between 100 and 1,000 galaxies, and their mass could be as giant as a quadrillion suns, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 suns. There’s additionally matter to be discovered within the area between galaxies, which seems to be not solely empty. There’s intergalactic gasoline there, forming a plasma referred to as the intracluster medium.

As a result of galaxy clusters are so very giant, their gravity impacts mild that passes near them. In case you look very rigorously, you possibly can see that the background galaxies within the picture have elongated and smeared shapes. This occurs because of a phenomenon referred to as gravitational lensing. The sunshine which comes from these galaxies has to cross by the central galaxy cluster on its strategy to us. The galaxy cluster has such an enormous gravitational impact that it distorts the sunshine touring near it. By the point this mild arrives at Earth, the form of the background galaxies has been distorted.

Gravitational lensing doesn’t solely occur with large galaxy clusters. It additionally occurs on a smaller scale, equivalent to when mild from one star passes shut to a different star. This acts just like a magnifying glass, permitting scientists to see extra particulars of the background star. This method may even be used to seek for exoplanets, equivalent to might be used within the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman House Telescope.