Astronomers using the NASA / ESA / CSA James Webb space telescope captured a New remarkable image Abell S1063 galaxies.
This webb image shows the group of Abell S1063 massive galaxies. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / H. Atek & M. Zamani, ESA & Webb / R. Endsley.
Abell S1063 is a massive group of galaxies located at around 4.5 billion light years in the Grus constellation.
The cluster contains approximately 100 million million solar masses and contains 51 confirmed galaxies and perhaps more than 400 others.
The enormous mass of Abell S1063 deforms and amplifies the light of the galaxies behind it due to a effect called gravitational lens.
“Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by bright streaks of light, and these distorted arcs are the real object of our interest: weak galaxies of the distant past of the universe,” webb astronomers said in a press release.
“Abell S1063 has already been observed by the Frontier Fields program of the NASA / ESA Hubble space telescope.”
“It has a strong gravitational lens: the cluster of galaxies is so massive that the light of the distant galaxies aligned behind it is folded around it, creating the deformed arcs that we see here.”
“Like a glass lens, it concentrates the light of these distant galaxies.”
“The resulting images, although distorted, are both shiny and enlarged – sufficient to be observed and studied.”
“It was the objective of Hubble's observations, using the Galaxy cluster as a magnifying glass to study the early universe.”
The new image of Abell S1063 was captured by Webb infrared camera (Nircam).
“This image has an incredible forest of lens arcs around Abell S1063, which reveal distorted background galaxies to a range of cosmic distances, as well as a multitude of weak galaxies and unpublished characteristics,” said the researchers.
“This image is called a deep field – a long exposure of a single area in the sky, collecting as much light as possible to draw the weakest and most distant galaxies which do not appear in ordinary images.”
“With 9 snapshots separated from different wavelengths from the close infrared light, totaling about 120 hours of observation time and helped by the magnifying effect of the gravitational lens, it is the deepest look of webb on a single target to date.”
“Focifying such a power of observation on a massive gravitational lens, such as Abell S1063, therefore has the potential to reveal some of the very first galaxies formed in the early universe.”
