Webb Refines the Bullet Cluster’s Mass

belaUniverse Today5 hours ago2 Views

This new image shows the central region of the Bullet Cluster, where two cosmic giant galaxy clusters are colliding with each other. The galaxies and foreground stars in the image were captured by Webb in near-infrared light (yellow and white). Meanwhile, Chandra used its X-ray vision to capture the hot gas that pervades both colliding clusters (pink) The blue represents the dark matter, which was precisely mapped by researchers with Webb’s detailed imaging. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Near-infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image processing: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale

One of the most iconic cosmic scenes in the Universe lies nearly 3.8 billion light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Carina. This is where two massive clusters of galaxies have collided. The resulting combined galaxies and other material is now called the Bullet Cluster, after one of the two members that interacted over several billion years. It’s one of the hottest-known galaxy clusters, thanks to clouds of gas that were heated by shockwaves during the event. Astronomers have observed this scene with several different telescopes in multiple wavelengths of light, including X-ray and infrared. Those observations and others show that the dark matter makes up the majority of the cluster’s mass. Its gravitational effect distorts light from more distant objects and makes it an ideal gravitational lens.

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