Mapping Dark Matter, 4.5 Billion light Years Away
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, HST Frontier Fields
Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have mapped the mass within a galaxy cluster more precisely than ever before. Created using observations from Hubble’s Frontier Fields observing programme, the map shows the amount and distribution of mass within MCS J0416.1–2403, a massive galaxy cluster found to be 160 trillion times the mass of the Sun.
The detail in this ‘mass map’ was made possible thanks to the unprecedented depth of data provided by new Hubble observations, and the cosmic phenomenon known as strong gravitational lensing. The team, led by Dr Mathilde Jauzac of Durham University in the UK and the Astrophysics & Cosmology Research Unit in South Africa, publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Measuring the amount and distribution of mass within distant objects in the Universe can be very difficult. A trick often used by astronomers is to explore the contents of large clusters of galaxies by studying the gravitational effects they have on the light from very distant objects beyond them. This is one of the main goals of Hubble’s Frontier Fields, an ambitious observing programme scanning six different galaxy clusters — including MCS J0416.1–2403.
