Hubble Focuses on Massive Galaxy Cluster

A new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows WHL J24.3324-8.477, a massive galaxy cluster some 7.1 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus.

This Hubble image shows the massive galaxy cluster WHL J24.3324-8.477. The bright flash in the middle of the image is actually a star lying within our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Galaxy clusters are fundamental building blocks of the Universe, like stars and galaxies.

Due to their complex appearance as collections of galaxies which are often not easily recognized as one unit, astronomers have begun to study them systematically only recently.

According to scientists, there are four types of galaxy clusters — regular and irregular, rich and poor.

Regular galaxy clusters are spherically shaped, and usually rich, which means they have thousands of galaxy members.

Irregular clusters have no specific shape and are generally poor, having only about a hundred members or less.

Galaxy clusters are important for exploring dark matter because they reside in a region where such matter is much denser than average.

Astronomers believe that the heavier a galaxy cluster is, the more dark matter it has in its environment.

The newly released image of the massive galaxy cluster WHL J24.3324-8.477 was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide-Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instruments as part of an observing program called Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS).

RELICS imaged 41 massive galaxy clusters with the aim of finding the brightest distant galaxies for the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope to study.

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