Distant & Ancient Galaxy Cluster SPT0615 in Pictor | Hubble Space Telescope

Distant & Ancient Galaxy Cluster SPT0615 in Pictor | Hubble Space Telescope

Dotted across the sky in the constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel) is the galaxy cluster highlighted here by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope: SPT-CL J0615-5746, or SPT0615 for short. First discovered by the South Pole Telescope less than a decade ago, SPT0615 is exceptional among the myriad clusters so far cataloged in our map of the Universe—it is among the highest-redshift clusters that has a full, strong lens model published.

SPT0615 is a massive cluster of galaxies, one of the farthest observed to cause gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from a background object is deflected around mass between the object and the observer. Among the identified background objects, there is SPT0615-JD (highlighted in the second image's inset), a galaxy that is thought to have emerged just 500 million years after the Big Bang. This puts it among the very earliest structures to form in the Universe. It is also the farthest galaxy ever imaged by means of gravitational lensing. Though a few other primitive galaxies have been seen at this early epoch, they have essentially all looked like red dots, given their small size and tremendous distances.

Image analysis shows that the galaxy weighs in at no more than 3 billion solar masses (roughly 1/100th the mass of our Milky Way galaxy). It is less than 2500 light-years across, half the size of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The object is considered prototypical of young galaxies that emerged during the epoch shortly after the Big Bang.

Just as ancient paintings can tell us about the period of history when they were painted, so too can ancient galaxies tell us about the era of the Universe when they existed. To learn about cosmological history, astronomers explore the most distant reaches of the Universe, probing ever further out into the cosmos. The light from distant objects travels to us from so far away that it takes an immensely long time to reach us, meaning that it carries information from the past—information about the time when it was emitted.

By studying such distant objects, astronomers are continuing to fill the gaps in our picture of what the very early Universe looked like, and uncover more about how it evolved into its current state.

Image Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Karachentsev et al., F. High et al., and B. Salmon (STScI)
Release Dates: May 6, 2019 (image 1), January 12, 2018 (image 2)

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