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Astronomers from the University of Chicago have obtained a unique close-up view of the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623 yet discovered.
The images taken by researchers who used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, offers a visually striking example of gravitational lensing, in which one massive object's gravitational field can magnify and distort the light coming from another object behind.
Such optical tricks stem from Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes how gravity can warp space and time, including bending the path that light travels.
In this case, gravity from the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623 bent and amplified the light coming from a much more distant galaxy, located 10 billion light-years from Earth.
This "gravitational telescope" creates a vast arc of light, as if the distant galaxy had been reflected in a funhouse mirror.
The UChicago team reconstructed what the distant galaxy really looks like, using computational tools that reversed the effect of gravitational lensing.
"What's happening here is a manifestation of general relativity," Michael Gladders, assistant professor in astronomy and astrophysics at Uchicago, said.
"Instead of seeing the normal, faint image of that distant source, you see highly distorted, highly magnified, and in this case, multiple images of the source caused by the intervening gravitational mass," he said.
The reconstructed image of the galaxy revealed regions of star formation glowing like bright points of light. These are much brighter than any star-formation region in Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way.
In 2006 the Chicago astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to measure the arc's distance and calculated that the galaxy appears more than three
times brighter than previously discovered lensed galaxies.
Compass and Scale Image of Galaxy Cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Rigby (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), and
K. Sharon (Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago), and M. Gladders and E. Wuyts (University of Chicago)
Last year, Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Chicago team imaged the arc with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.
According to Gladders, using this gravitational lens as a telescope offers two major scientific opportunities. First, "It gives us a look at that very distant source with a precision and fidelity that we couldn't otherwise achieve."
Secondly, it provides an opportunity to learn something about the lens-forming mass, which is dominated by dark matter.
"It's really a way of looking at the nature of dark matter," Gladders said.
This graphic shows a reconstruction (at lower left) of the brightest galaxy whose image has been distorted by the gravity
of a distant galaxy cluster. The small rectangle in the center shows the location of the background galaxy on the sky if the
intervening galaxy cluster were not there. The rounded outlines show distinct, distorted images of the background galaxy
resulting from lensing by the mass in the cluster. The image at lower left is a reconstruction of what the lensed galaxy
would look like in the absence of the cluster, based on a model of the cluster's mass distribution derived from studying
the distorted galaxy images.Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Rigby (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), K. Sharon (Kavli Institute
for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago), and M. Gladders and E. Wuyts (University of Chicago)
Dark matter accounts for nearly 90 percent of all matter in the universe, yet its identity remains one of the biggest mysteries of modern science.
Keren Sharon, a postdoctoral scholar at Uchicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, led the effort to perform a detailed reconstruction of the lensed galaxy.
Sharon painstakingly created a computer reconstruction of the gravitational lens, then reverse-engineered the distorted image to determine the distant galaxy's actual appearance.
"It was a fun puzzle to solve, especially when we had such great data," Keren Sharon said.
Through spectroscopy, the spreading out of light into its constituent colours, the team plans to analyse the distant galaxy's star-forming regions from the inside out to better understand why they are forming so many stars.
The team also has obtained data from one of the twin Magellan Telescopes to help them determine why the galaxy, which is 10 billion light years away, looks so irregular.
"It's not like we have something to compare it to.
"We don't know what other galaxies at the same distance look like at this level of detail," she added.
The study has been published in Astrophysical Journal. (ANI)
Abnormal Star Discovered In The 'Forbidden Zone'
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists.
The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.
Thermonuclear Burning In A Neutron Star Detected For The First Time!
It's a very important discovery!
For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a
neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
Possible Water In The Atmosphere Of A Super-Earth
Four CfA astronomers, Zachory Berta, David Charbonneau, Jean-Michel Desert, and Jonathan Irwin, together with six colleagues,
used the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the atmosphere around the transiting super-Earth known as GJ1214b.
This exoplanet has a mass of 6.5 Earth-masses and a radius of 2.7 Earth-radii, and it orbits a small M-dwarf star (its diameter
is only 21% of the Sun's).
Astronomical Mystery - Tremendous Explosion And Appearance Of Odd Rings
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The collision occurred at speeds near 60 million kilometers per hour and shock-heats the ring material causing it to glow.
Over time, astronomers have watched and waited for the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion to crash into previously expelled material...
Doesn't Secret Dark Matter Exist?
The more scientists study dark matter they know lesser and are not particularly optimistic about their results.
After completing this study, we know less about dark matter than we did before," said Matt Walker, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
A mysterious and still unknown substance is totally invisible in the Universe and reveals its presence only through its gravitational pull...
Dwarf Irregular Galaxy That Forces Scientists To Re-Evaluate Old Theory
Astronomers from Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, Portugal and Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden come up
with new findings regarding one of the most studied objects - the dwarf galaxy I Zw 18.
The results led the scientists to the conclusion that this enigmatic blue compact dwarf might force
astronomers to review current galaxy formation models and much of what is known about galaxy formation and evolution might need substantial revision.
The Eyes Of A Future Alien Astronomer - What Will They See?
Have you ever wondered what the Universe will look like for a future alien astronomer?
It will in fact be entirely different from what it is today.
One trillion years from now, an alien astronomer in our galaxy will have great difficulties figuring out how the universe began.
The Milky Way will have merged with the Andromeda galaxy to form the Milkomeda galaxy. Many of its stars, including our Sun, will have burned out.
Violent Dragon Clash Billions Of Years Ago
NGC 5907 is sometimes called the "Splinter" or Knife Edge Galaxy because of its unusual appearance.
It is a spiral galaxy lying in the Dragon constellation,
about 40 million light-years from Earth that could have been formed through a gigantic collision of galaxies, 8 to 9 billion years ago.
Researchers Developed A Very Accurate Map Of Milky Way's Magnetic Field
The Milky Way is hard to map because we are sitting on the edge of the galaxy looking through it.
However, we know that spiral galaxies like the Milky Way have magnetic fields that follow a particular pattern so we were able
use polarised light to map the magnetic fields...
MessageToEagle.com -
Astronomers from the University of Chicago have obtained a unique close-up view of the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623 yet discovered.
A team of astrophysicists from Germany, France and Italy have discovered in the constellation Leo is an old star.
The star's existence raised at once many questions for scientists.
The object is definitely not as its "contemporaries" that appeared immediately after the Big Bang event.
It's a very important discovery!
For the first time, an international team of scientists have detected all phases of thermonuclear burning in a
neutron star, located close to the center of the galaxy in the globular cluster Terzan 5.
Four CfA astronomers, Zachory Berta, David Charbonneau, Jean-Michel Desert, and Jonathan Irwin, together with six colleagues,
used the Hubble Space Telescope to probe the atmosphere around the transiting super-Earth known as GJ1214b.
This exoplanet has a mass of 6.5 Earth-masses and a radius of 2.7 Earth-radii, and it orbits a small M-dwarf star (its diameter
is only 21% of the Sun's).
Twenty five years ago, on 1987 February 23, the brightest supernova of modern times was observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The more scientists study dark matter they know lesser and are not particularly optimistic about their results.
Astronomers from Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto, Portugal and Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden come up
with new findings regarding one of the most studied objects - the dwarf galaxy I Zw 18.
Have you ever wondered what the Universe will look like for a future alien astronomer?
NGC 5907 is sometimes called the "Splinter" or Knife Edge Galaxy because of its unusual appearance.
It is a spiral galaxy lying in the Dragon constellation,
about 40 million light-years from Earth that could have been formed through a gigantic collision of galaxies, 8 to 9 billion years ago.
The Milky Way is hard to map because we are sitting on the edge of the galaxy looking through it.
However, we know that spiral galaxies like the Milky Way have magnetic fields that follow a particular pattern so we were able
use polarised light to map the magnetic fields...