The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a cosmic Pandora’s box packed with 50,000 galaxies.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), which jointly operate the James Webb Space Telescope, released the latest images of the Pandora galaxy cluster through official channels on the 16th.
The Pandora galaxy cluster is the nickname for the Abell 2744 galaxy cluster, about 3.5 billion light-years away toward the constellation of Sculptor. A variety of astronomical phenomena occur due to the collision of galaxy clusters, but the secret has not yet been elucidated, so it has been given an interesting name.
The picture is a composite of pictures taken using the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and six infrared filters. Since the James Webb Space Telescope uses infrared wavelengths that cannot be captured by the human eye, the color of the image is arbitrarily colored according to the filter.
ESA said, “The picture is a combination of four images taken by James Webb over a period of 30 hours, with a width of about one fifth of the diameter of the full moon.” It is a galaxy made of,” he explained.
The US Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) analyzed that this photo contains 50,000 galaxies, including galaxies belonging to the Pandora cluster and more distant galaxies beyond it. An official from STScI said, “It is embarrassing that the picture contains so much information, such as numerous galaxies and distinct gravitational lensing effects.” “he said.
Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon in which space-time is distorted by the mass of a celestial body and the direction of light emitted from the opposite celestial body (light source) is distorted. Since it amplifies the amount of light like a camera or telescope lens, it is applied to the observation of distant celestial bodies.
The investigation of the Pandora galaxy cluster is being conducted as part of the ‘UNCOVER program’ using the James Webb Space Telescope. ‘UNCOVER’ is an abbreviation of ‘ULTRADEEP NIRSPEC AND NIRCAM OBSERVATIONS BEFORE THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION’, which means precision observation using the James Webb Space Telescope’s main equipment NIRCam and NIRSpec.
NASA said, “Through additional observations of Abel 2744 scheduled for this summer, we will obtain information such as the chemical composition and exact distance of distant galaxies that have undergone gravitational lensing.” You will gain new knowledge about it.”
Reporter Jeong Ian anglee@sputnik.kr