Peek Deep

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM). Acknowl­edge­ment: Marc Post­man (STScI)

Using a super-heavyweight galaxy as a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, sci­en­tists peer deep into the uni­verse in this image from the NASA/ESA Hub­ble Space Telescope.

Explore the arcs of light and far­away galax­ies in this image of a dense clus­ter of galax­ies called Abell 383. Abell 383 acts as a lens. The grav­ity is so pow­er­ful that it can bend light allow­ing us to see objects behind it. The grav­ity also mag­ni­fies the light. With­out the chance align­ment of the faroff galaxy and Abell 383, the light would be too dim to be observed from Earth. The big arcs of light are galax­ies that are closer. If you zoom close, there are faint smudges that show galax­ies that were formed very close to the begin­ning of the cre­ation of the uni­verse. Though the light is highly dis­torted, sci­en­tists can tease out the galaxy’s red­shift, or how fast it is mov­ing away from Earth. The higher the red­shift the far­ther away an object is. These faint galax­ies formed a mere 950 mil­lion years after the Uni­verse formed; about 13.7 bil­lion years ago. Older galax­ies have been found but sci­en­tists found that this galaxy shines dif­fer­ently with both old and new stars. By study­ing the light from these early galax­ies, astronomers can cre­ate a clearer pic­ture of the early Universe.

Abell 383 is one of the most famous Abell clus­ters. It is found toward the con­stel­la­tion Eri­danus, the River.