NASA combines data from two telescopes, releases stunning image of cosmic ‘Christmas Tree’
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The announcement from NASA includes several images of the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster. One of these images provides a magnified view of a background galaxy, featuring a star nicknamed "Mothra."
NASA has recently shared a captivating image of the universe, offering an unprecedented level of detail. This image was created by combining data from two powerful space telescopes: the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The featured image showcases a distant pair of colliding galaxy clusters. What makes this visualisation remarkable is that it combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with visible light observations collected by the Hubble Space Telescope. This combination spans a vast range of light wavelengths, resulting in a picture that seems to sparkle with colours.
These particular galaxy clusters, known by the technical designation MACS0416, are situated about 4.3 billion light years away from Earth. Scientists studying these clusters anticipate that they will eventually merge to form an even larger cluster.
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Interestingly, the scientists involved in this extensive study have informally dubbed this bundle of celestial objects the "Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster." This nickname is derived from the distinctive and polychromatic appearance of the clusters in the image.
"We're calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it's so colourful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. We can see transients everywhere," Haojing Yan, an astronomer and professor at the University of Missouri, who was the lead author of one paper reviewing the results of the joint galactic study by Webb and Hubble, said in a statement.
The announcement from NASA includes several images of the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster. One of these images provides a magnified view of a background galaxy, featuring a star nicknamed "Mothra."
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Scientists estimate that Mothra existed approximately 3 billion years after the big bang, roughly 11 billion years ago. To put this into perspective, our solar system's sun formed around 4.6 billion years ago, around the same time as Earth.
These galaxy clusters, captured in the new images, are part of a series of super-deep views of the universe initiated by NASA's Frontier Fields program, which began in 2014 with the Hubble Space Telescope.
(With inputs from agencies)
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