Astronomy Picture of the Day

APOD — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 17:07:49 GMT

Astronomy Picture of the Day

09 June 2023

Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

This deep field mosaicked image presents a stunning view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 from the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. Also dubbed Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744 itself appears to be a ponderous merger of three different massive galaxy clusters some 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation Sculptor. Dominated by dark matter, the mega-cluster warps and distorts the fabric of spacetime, gravitationally lensing even more distant objects. Redder than the Pandora cluster galaxies many of the lensed sources are very distant galaxies in the early Universe, stretched and distorted into arcs. Of course distinctive diffraction spikes mark foreground Milky Way stars. At the Pandora Cluster's estimated distance this cosmic box spans about 6 million light-years.

#APOD #galaxy #MilkyWay #darkMatter #galaxyCluster

Posted manually due to troubles at NASA APOD API

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230609.html

Astronomy Picture of the Day

APOD — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 13:48:11 GMT

Astronomy Picture of the Day

07 June 2023

M94: A Double Ring Galaxy

Image Credit & Copyright: Brian Brennan

Most galaxies don't have any rings of stars and gas -- why does M94 have two? First, spiral galaxy M94 has an inner ring of newly formed stars surrounding its nucleus, giving it not only an unusual appearance but also a strong interior glow. A leading origin hypothesis holds that an elongated knot of stars known as a bar rotates in M94 and has generated a burst of star formation in this inner ring. Observations have also revealed another ring, an outer ring, one that is more faint, different in color, not closed, and relatively complex. What caused this outer ring is currently unknown. M94, pictured here, spans about 45,000 light years in total, lies about 15 million light years away, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici).

#APOD #galaxy #Universe #spaceRing #curiosity

Posted manually due to troubles at NASA APOD API (503)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230607.html