Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, HST Frontier FieldsAcknowledgement: Mathilde Jauzac (Durham University, UK and Astrophysics & Cosmology Research Unit, South Africa) and Jean-Paul Kneib (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACS J0416.12403. This is one of six being studied by the Hubble Frontier Fields programme. This programme seeks to analyse the mass distribution in these huge clusters and to use the gravitational lensing effect of these clusters, to peer even deeper into the distant Universe. A team of researchers used almost 200 images of distant galaxies, whose light has been bent and magnified by this huge cluster, combined with the depth of Hubble data to measure the total mass of this cluster more precisely than ever before.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://esahubble.org/images/heic1416a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Baltimore, MD, United States

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License