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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details about a massive galaxy cluster known as “Pandora’s Cluster” or Abell 2744. The new observation, made with the telescope’s powerful infrared instruments, is expected to shed new light on the development of galaxies and their interactions within large-scale structures.
Pandora’s Cluster is a merging of several smaller galaxy clusters that occurred over a period of about 350 million years. The cluster is located about 4 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor. It is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, with a total mass estimated to be about 3 quadrillion times that of the Sun.
The new image reveals the distribution of dark matter in the cluster, as well as the positions of the individual galaxies and the hot gas that fills the space between them. Dark matter is an invisible substance that is thought to make up about 85% of the matter in the universe and is the “glue” that holds galaxies and galaxy clusters together. By mapping the distribution of dark matter, astronomers can better understand the formation and evolution of large-scale structures in the universe.
The new observation also shows the interactions between the galaxies and the hot gas, which is thought to be the dominant form of matter in the cluster. The hot gas emits X-rays, and its distribution provides clues about the history of the cluster and the processes that shape the galaxies within it.
The Webb telescope’s high sensitivity and resolution enable astronomers to study these objects in greater detail than ever before. The new data from Pandora’s Cluster is just one example of the groundbreaking science that is expected to be produced by the Webb telescope in the coming years.
[…] NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Captures New Details of “Pandora’s Cluster”… […]