The good old Hubble telescope that’s operated by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) seems to be bitting the bullet lately with new observations. The telescope has brought images of the Terzan 9 globular cluster, the NGC 7496 galaxy, the Ruprecht 106 globular cluster, and more.
As for now, it’s time for the Abell 1351 lensing galaxy cluster to be under the spotlight after being photographed by Hubble. We’re talking about a cluster located in the constellation known as Ursa Major that’s placed in the northern hemisphere of the sky. The cluster is roughly 4 billion light-years away from Earth. The telescope has used the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), as well as the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to create a new image of the amazing cosmic structure.
Behold the outcome:
Our latest Picture of the Week features the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1351, lying in the constellation Ursa Major in the northern hemisphere.
Credit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA , H. Ebeling
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz pic.twitter.com/Q9ryNi1LlW— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) June 20, 2022
Hubble astronomers said more about the image, as sci-news.com quotes:
This Hubble image is filled with streaks of light, which are actually the images of distant galaxies,
The streaks are the result of gravitational lensing, an astrophysical phenomenon that occurs when a massive celestial body such as a galaxy cluster distorts spacetime sufficiently strongly to affect the path of light passing through it — almost as if the light were passing through a gigantic lens.
Gravitational lensing comes in two varieties — strong and weak — and both can give astronomers an insight into the distribution of mass within a lensing galaxy cluster such as Abell 1351.
Once again, we wish to express our amazement that the Hubble telescope is still up there and very active, even though it’s been about six months since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched by NASA into space. Webb is considered the replacement for Hubble, as it’s a next-generation telescope capable of looking a lot deeper into galaxies and stars than astronomers had ever done it before.
