Image: Hubble views a double cluster of glowing galaxies

This Hubble picture contains a huge cluster of brightly glowing galaxies, first recognized as Abell 3192. Like all galaxy clusters, this one is suffused with sizzling fuel that emits highly effective X-rays, and it’s enveloped in a halo of invisible dark matter. All this unseen materials—to not point out the various galaxies seen on this picture—contains such an enormous quantity of mass that the galaxy cluster noticeably curves spacetime round it, making it right into a gravitational lens. Smaller galaxies behind the cluster seem distorted into lengthy, warped arcs across the cluster’s edges.

The galaxy cluster is within the constellation Eridanus, however the query of its distance from Earth is a extra difficult one. Abell 3192 was initially documented within the 1989 replace of the Abell catalog of galaxy clusters that was first printed in 1958. At the moment, Abell 3192 was thought to comprise a single cluster of galaxies, concentrated at a single distance. Nonetheless, additional analysis revealed one thing stunning: the cluster’s mass appeared to be densest at two distinct factors somewhat than one.

It was subsequently proven that the unique Abell cluster is definitely comprised of two unbiased galaxy clusters—a foreground group round 2.3 billion light-years from Earth, and one other group on the larger distance of about 5.4 billion light-years from our planet. The extra distant galaxy cluster, included within the Large Cluster Survey as MCS J0358.8-2955, is central on this picture. The 2 galaxy teams are thought to have plenty equal to round 30 trillion and 120 trillion occasions the mass of the sun, respectively. Each of the 2 largest galaxies on the heart of this picture are a part of MCS J0358.8-2955; the smaller galaxies you see right here, nevertheless, are a mix of the 2 teams inside Abell 3192.