Hubble image archive
Hubble Spies Building Blocks of Most Distant Galaxy Cluster
The composite image at left, taken in visible and near-infrared light, reveals the location of five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. The circles pinpoint the galaxies.The sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spied the...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2012
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2012-05-2965-image
The composite image at left, taken in visible and near-infrared light, reveals the location of five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. The circles pinpoint the galaxies.
The sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spied the galaxies in a random sky survey. The developing cluster is the most distant ever observed. The young galaxies lived just 600 million years after the universe's birth in the big bang.
The average distance between them is comparable to that of the galaxies in the Local Group, consisting of two large spiral galaxies, the Milky Way and Andromeda, and a few dozen small dwarf galaxies.
The close-up images at right, taken in near-infrared light, show the puny galaxies. The letters "a" through "e" correspond to the galaxies' location in the wide-field view at left. Simulations show that the galaxies will eventually merge and form the brightest central galaxy in the cluster, a giant elliptical similar to the Virgo cluster's M87.
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. The developing cluster presumably will grow into a massive galactic city, similar in size to the nearby Virgo cluster, a collection of more than 2,000 galaxies.
Credits
NASA, ESA, M. Trenti (University of Colorado, Boulder, and Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK), L. Bradley (STScI), and the BoRG teamImage Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Galaxies from the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) Survey, BoRG 58 |
| Object Description | Survey Field |
| R.A. Position | 14h 36m 55.1s |
| Dec. Position | 50° 43' 9.79" |
| Constellation | Boötes |
| Distance | Redshift: z~8 |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | These data were from the HST proposal : M. Trenti (University of Colorado, Boulder), M. Stiavelli, J. MacKenty, and M. Mutchler (STScI), and T. Treu (University of California, Santa Barbara). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS and HST>WFC3/IR |
| Exposure Dates | July 28, 2010, Exposure Time: 2.6 hours |
| Filters | WFC3/UVIS: F606W (V), WFC3/IR: F098M (blue grism), and F160W (H) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 instrument on HST. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F606W (V) Green: F098M (blue grism) Red: F160W (H) |
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Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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