James Webb Space Telescope imagery of Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744) delivers three galaxy clusters and so much more. Take a tour of the view.
Video: STScI, Danielle Kirshenblat
Music: PremiumBeat Music, Klaus Hergersheimer
Science: Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh)
Image Processing: STScI, Alyssa Pagan
Video: STScI, Danielle Kirshenblat
Music: PremiumBeat Music, Klaus Hergersheimer
Science: Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh)
Image Processing: STScI, Alyssa Pagan
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TechTranscript
00:00NASA's James Webb Space Telescope presents a new view of Abell 2744, also known as Pandora's
00:08Cluster, displaying various depths of space in a single image, ranging from a foreground
00:12star in our own galaxy, to the megacluster forming as multiple massive galaxy clusters
00:18merge 4 billion light-years away, to the even more distant galaxies behind the cluster,
00:24whose light is magnified and distorted by the megacluster's warping of spacetime.
00:31Without the cluster's magnification boost, even the Webb telescope could not see these
00:35faint, extremely distant galaxies.
00:41Some features that Webb shows distinctly, like this dusty red galaxy, were not detected
00:46at all when the Hubble Space Telescope studied the region.
00:50Astronomers are using this image to choose certain galaxies for follow-up to get precise
00:54distance measurements and details about intriguing features.
01:02This small red dot is a distant source of infrared light that has so far defied characterization.
01:08It must be extremely compact, because even with the visual stretching caused by the cluster's
01:13warped spacetime, it still appears as a tiny dot.
01:17One theory is that it is a glowing disk of gas surrounding a supermassive black hole
01:22in the early universe.
01:24Webb's follow-up observations will further reveal the wonders of Pandora's Cluster and
01:28uncover a new understanding of the universe.