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 Abel 2744,

00:06also known as Pandora's Cluster, displaying various depths of space in a single image,

00:11ranging from a foreground star in our own galaxy,

00:14to the megacluster forming as multiple massive galaxy clusters merge 4 billion light-years away,

00:21to the even more distant galaxies behind the cluster,

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

00:30Without the cluster's magnification boost,

00:33even the Webb Telescope could not see these faint, extremely distant galaxies.

00:40Some features that Webb shows distinctly, like this dusty red galaxy,

00:45were not detected at all when the Hubble Space Telescope studied the region.

00:49Astronomers are using this image to choose certain galaxies for follow-up

00:53to get precise distance measurements and details about intriguing features.

01:00This 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. One theory is that it is a glowing disk of gas

01:20surrounding a supermassive black hole in the early universe. Webb's follow-up observations will further

01:26reveal the wonders of Pandora's cluster and uncover a new understanding of the universe.

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