Pandora’s Cluster is one astronomical object that’s out of this world! Not only does it have a name that sounds like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie, but it’s also one of the most massive galaxy clusters we know of.
Located about 3.4 billion light-years away, Pandora’s Cluster is made up of over 500 galaxies held together by gravity. And just like its namesake from Greek mythology, this cluster of galaxies is full of surprises.
For starters, the mass of Pandora’s Cluster is so enormous that it bends and warps the fabric of space-time around it, causing light to curve as it passes through. This phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing, allows astronomers to study even more distant objects behind the cluster that would otherwise be too faint to see.
It’s a great big universe…
Webb’s new view of Pandora’s Cluster stitches 4 snapshots together into a panorama, showing 3 separate galaxy clusters merging into a megacluster and some 50,000 sources of near-infrared light. https://t.co/WOYTvm6pSa pic.twitter.com/0dLHKLMe6h
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) February 15, 2023
Pandora’s Cluster is also a cosmic powerhouse, producing some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. At its center, there’s a supermassive black hole that’s gobbling up matter at an incredible rate, emitting huge jets of particles that shoot out from the black hole at nearly the speed of light.
There’s no wonder why the James Webb Space Telescope was able to capture the Pandora Cluster once again. We’re talking about a next-generation space telescope that has a primary mirror measuring 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter, which is more than twice the size of the Hubble’s mirror, and is composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments that can be adjusted individually to correct for distortions in the incoming light.
The JWST is also equipped with a suite of scientific instruments that can observe the universe across a wide range of wavelengths, from the visible to the mid-infrared. These instruments include a camera, a spectrograph, and a coronagraph, which can be used to study everything from exoplanets to the earliest galaxies in the universe.
