A spectacular new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows SPT-CL J0615-5746, a very massive group of galaxies located approximately 7.7 billion light-yearsaway in the constellation Pictor. First discovered by the South Pole Telescope less than a decade ago, SPT-CL J0615-5746 is so massive that its gravity bends light like a lens, making it very useful for peering deep into the early Universe.
This Hubble image shows the massive galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615-5746. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble
Galaxy clusters contain thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes and sizes.
Typically, 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.
Typically, 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.
Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of general relativity that massive objects will deform the fabric of space itself.
When light passes one of these objects, such as a huge galaxy cluster, its path is changed slightly.
This effect, called gravitational lensing, is only visible in rare cases and only the best telescopes can observe the related phenomena.
A galaxy cluster called SPT-CL J0615-5746 is one of the farthest observed to cause gravitational lensing.
Among the identified background objects, there is SPT0615-JD, a galaxy that is thought to have emerged just 500 million years after the Big Bang. It is the farthest galaxy ever imaged by means of gravitational lensing.
SPT0615-JD has a mass of approximately 3 billion solar masses and is less than 2,500 light-years across, half the size of the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud.
The object is considered prototypical of young galaxies that emerged during the epoch shortly after the Big Bang.
“Just as ancient paintings can tell us about the period of history in which they were painted, so too can ancient galaxies tell us about the era of the Universe in which they existed,” Hubble astronomers said.
“To learn about cosmological history, we explore the most distant reaches of the Universe, probing ever further out into the cosmos.”
“The light from distant objects travels to us from so far away that it takes an immensely long time to reach us, meaning that it carries information from the past — information about the time at which it was emitted.”
“By studying such distant objects, we are continuing to fill the gaps in our picture of what the very early Universe looked like, and uncover more about how it evolved into its current state.”
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