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 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

Transcript

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.

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