Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a stunning image of the unusual galaxy cluster ACO S520.
Galaxy clusters are fundamental building blocks of the Universe, like stars and galaxies.
Typically, they contain thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes and sizes.
They have a mass of about one million billion times the mass of the Sun and form over billions of years as smaller groups of galaxies slowly come together.
At one point in time galaxy clusters were believed to be the largest structures in the Universe — until they were usurped in the 1980s by the discovery of superclusters, which typically contain dozens of galaxy clusters and groups and span hundreds of millions of light-years.
However, clusters do have one thing to cling on to; superclusters are not held together by gravity, so galaxy clusters still retain the title of the biggest structures in the Universe bound by gravity.
“Galaxy clusters are among the largest known objects in the Universe, and studying these objects can provide insights into the distribution of dark matter, which is responsible for most of the mass of a galaxy cluster,” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“The vast masses of galaxy clusters is what causes many of them to act as gravitational lenses which distort and magnify light from even more distant objects.”
“This can allow astronomers to use galaxy clusters as a kind of natural gravitational telescope to reveal distant objects that would usually be too faint to resolve — even for the crystal-clear vision of Hubble.”
The galaxy cluster ACO S520, also known as PSZ1 G262.27-35.38, is located 3.4 billion light-years away in the constellation of Pictor.
“A menagerie of interesting astronomical finds fill the new Hubble image,” the astronomers said.
“As well as several large elliptical galaxies, a ring-shaped galaxy is lurking on the right of the image”
“A pair of bright stars are also visible at the left of this image,…
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