{"id":8184,"date":"2016-03-27T07:14:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T07:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=8184"},"modified":"2016-03-27T07:23:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T07:23:39","slug":"hubble-looks-into-a-cosmic-kaleidoscope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/hubble-looks-into-a-cosmic-kaleidoscope\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Looks Into a Cosmic Kaleidoscope"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, NRAO\/AUI\/NSF, STScI, and G. Ogrean (Stanford University), Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI), and the HFF team<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At first glance, this cosmic kaleidoscope of purple, blue and pink offers a strikingly beautiful \u2014 and serene \u2014 snapshot of the cosmos. However, this multi-colored haze actually marks the site of two colliding galaxy clusters, forming a single object known as\u00a0MACS J0416.1-2403<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(or MACS J0416 for short).<\/span><\/p>\n

MACS J0416 is located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Eridanus. This image of the cluster combines data from three different telescopes: the\u00a0NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(showing the galaxies and stars), the\u00a0NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(diffuse emission in blue), and the\u00a0NRAO Jansky Very Large Array<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(diffuse emission in pink). Each telescope shows a different element of the cluster, allowing astronomers to study MACS J0416 in detail.<\/span><\/p>\n

As with all galaxy clusters, MACS J0416 contains a significant amount of dark matter, which leaves a detectable imprint in visible light by distorting the images of background galaxies. In this image, this dark matter appears to align well with the blue-hued hot gas, suggesting that the two clusters have not yet collided; if the clusters had already smashed into one another, the dark matter and gas would have separated. MACS J0416 also contains other features \u2014 such as a compact core of hot gas \u2014 that would likely have been disrupted had a collision already occurred.<\/span><\/p>\n

Together with five other galaxy clusters, MACS J0416 is playing a leading role in the Hubble\u00a0Frontier Fields program<\/span><\/a>, for which this data was obtained. Owing to its huge mass, the cluster is in fact bending the light of background objects, acting as a magnifying lens. Astronomers can use this phenomenon to find galaxies that existed only hundreds of million years after the big bang.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, this cosmic kaleidoscope of purple, blue and pink offers a strikingly beautiful \u2014 and serene \u2014 snapshot of the cosmos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",1041,1041,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",750,750,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1-1024x1024.jpg",750,750,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",1041,1041,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",1041,1041,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",800,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",570,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",600,600,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",600,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",490,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",360,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",65,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",640,640,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",96,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/hubble_friday_03252016-1.jpg",150,150,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}