Close-up: Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 in Cetus | Hubble Space Telescope

Close-up: Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 in Cetus | Hubble Space Telescope

This beautiful image shows the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 embedded in the middle of a field of nearly 8,000 galaxies scattered across space and time. Located approximately 4 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus, the Sea Monster, this immense cluster is a rich mix of a variety of galaxy shapes. This "galaxies galore" snapshot is from a Hubble Space Telescope survey to enlarge the area around huge galaxy clusters previously photographed by Hubble.

Galaxy clusters like Abell 370 are mainly composed of dark matter. Their large masses distort space, turning them into gravitational lenses that magnify and distort the light coming from distant background galaxies. This allows the discovery of background galaxies and supernovas that are so distant and faint that they could not have been photographed by Hubble without the aid of this additional gravitational amplification.

This image is part of the Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations (BUFFALO) survey.

Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Koekemoer (STScI), M. Jauzac (Durham University), C. Steinhardt (Niels Bohr Institute), and the BUFFALO team

Duration: 50 seconds
Released Date: Sept. 13, 2018

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