The Bullet Galaxy Cluster in Carina | James Webb Space Telescope

The Bullet Galaxy Cluster in Carina | James Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the central region of the Bullet Cluster with its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). The scene contains two massive galaxy clusters that sit on either side of the large, light blue spiral galaxy at the center. Webb’s extremely precise images revealed many more distant galaxies and faint objects, allowing a research team to refine the amount of mass in the two galaxy clusters.

These galaxy clusters act as gravitational lenses, magnifying the light of background galaxies. “Gravitational lensing allows us to infer the distribution of dark matter,” said James Jee, a co-author, professor at Yonsei University, and research associate at UC Davis in California.

The Bullet Cluster is found in the Carina constellation 3.8 billion light-years from Earth. It is huge in size, even in the vast expanse of space. 

Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, the European Space Agency (ESA) provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI—designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) contributed two important elements to the Webb Telescope:

- the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) allows the telescope to point at and focus on objects of interest

- the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), a scientific instrument that helps study many astronomical objects, from exoplanets to distant galaxies

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA, and the CSA.

Credits:
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC
Science: James Jee (Yonsei University, UC Davis), Sangjun Cha (Yonsei University), Kyle Finner (Caltech/IPAC)

Release Date: June 30, 2025

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