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> Galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745
Galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745
author: NASA/ESA/Novapix
reference: a-amg90-00170
Image Size 300 DPI: 32 * 33 cm
This picture shows a region where three galaxy clusters are merging and releasing enormous amounts of energy in the form of X-rays. These distant objects are around 5.4 billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Auriga and were imaged during the Massive Cluster Survey, a project to study distant clusters of galaxies using Hubble.
The amount of mass in this sea of galaxies is huge, and is great enough to visibly bend the fabric of spacetime. The strange distortion in the shapes of many of the galaxies in this picture, which appear stretched and bent as if they were looked at through a glass bottle, is a result of gravitational lensing, where the gravitational fields around massive objects bend light around them.
Image taken by the Hubble space telescope (HST). The exposure times were about 67 minutes and 33 minutes respectively and the field of view of the image is about 3 arcminutes across.
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