Latest Galaxy clusters Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A new observation of Abell 520 using the Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers determine that the core of the galaxy cluster is not over-dense in dark matter after all. Astronomers earlier this year spotted an overabundance of dark matter in the heart of the galaxy cluster. This observation was puzzling because dark matter and galaxies should be anchored together. Scientists have evidence that dark matter is responsible...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Astronomers were able to beat the odds by observing gravitational lensing taking place at 10 billion light-years away from Earth. Gravitational lensing is the bending of light from a distant galaxy, and it has never been observed behind a cluster at this range before. The giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the cluster's powerful gravity. Astronomers reported in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical...

Using a combination of powerful observatories in space and on the ground, astronomers have observed a violent collision between two galaxy clusters in which so-called normal matter has been wrenched apart from dark matter through a violent collision between two galaxy clusters. The newly discovered galaxy cluster is called DLSCL J0916.2+2951. It is similar to the Bullet Cluster, the first system in which the separation of dark and normal matter was observed, but with some important...

Two teams of astronomers have used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes to map the distribution of dark matter in a galaxy cluster known as Abell 383, which is located about 2.3 billion light years from Earth. Not only were the researchers able to find where the dark matter lies in the two dimensions across the sky, they were also able to determine how the dark matter is distributed along the line of sight. Dark matter is invisible material that does not emit or...

Two teams of astronomers have used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes to map the distribution of dark matter in a galaxy cluster known as Abell 383, which is located about 2.3 billion light years from Earth. Not only were the researchers able to find where the dark matter lies in the two dimensions across the sky, they were also able to determine how the dark matter is distributed along the line of sight. Dark matter is invisible material that does not emit...

Thanks to the presence of a natural “zoom lens” in space, University of Chicago scientists working with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a uniquely close-up look at the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy yet discovered. The imagery 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 it. Such optical tricks stem from Einstein’s theory of...

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter that predict galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance even during the shock of a collision. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Abell 520 is a gigantic merger of...

Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope got a uniquely close-up look at the brightest "magnified" galaxy yet discovered. This observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy vigorously forming stars when the universe was only one-third its present age. A so-called gravitational lens is produced when space is warped by a massive foreground object, whether it is the sun, a black hole or an entire...

A Naval Research Laboratory scientist is part of a team that has recently discovered that vast clouds of hot gas are "sloshing" in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. The scientists are studying the hot (30 million degree) gas using X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope to see the galaxies. "The X-ray images were amazing. We were able to see gas sloshing like liquid in a glass" explains...

A UC Davis graduate student who is leading a study of the collision of galaxy clusters 5 billion light years away discussed the team’s findings today, Jan. 10, in a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. “A galaxy cluster is like a little universe, because it has the same matter composition as the whole universe,” said William Dawson, a Ph.D. candidate in physics. “By studying this little universe, we can learn more about our...