James Webb Space Telescope's View Of Pandora's Cluster Is Interesting

Space.com

James Webb Space Telescope imagery of Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744) delivers "never-before-seen details," three galaxy clusters and so much more, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute. 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

Transcript

00:00 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope presents a new view of Abell 2744, also known as Pandora's

00:07 Cluster, displaying various depths of space in a single image, ranging from a foreground

00:12 star in our own galaxy, to the megacluster forming as multiple massive galaxy clusters

00:18 merge 4 billion light-years away, to the even more distant galaxies behind the cluster,

00:24 whose light is magnified and distorted by the megacluster's warping of space-time.

00:31 Without the cluster's magnification boost, even the Webb telescope could not see these

00:35 faint, extremely distant galaxies.

00:40 Some features that Webb shows distinctly, like this dusty red galaxy, were not detected

00:45 at all when the Hubble Space Telescope studied the region.

00:50 Astronomers are using this image to choose certain galaxies for follow-up to get precise

00:54 distance measurements and details about intriguing features.

01:01 This small red dot is a distant source of infrared light that has so far defied characterization.

01:08 It must be extremely compact, because even with the visual stretching caused by the cluster's

01:13 warped space-time, it still appears as a tiny dot.

01:17 One theory is that it is a glowing disk of gas surrounding a supermassive black hole

01:21 in the early universe.

01:23 Webb's follow-up observations will further reveal the wonders of Pandora's Cluster and

01:28 uncover a new understanding of the universe.

01:31 [Music]

Category

Transcript

Recommended