Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Images not Posted in the Government Shutdown - Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies

NASA ^ | 3 Oct, 2025 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), Pro

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: This deep field mosaicked image presents a stunning view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 recorded by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. Also dubbed Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744 itself appears to be a ponderous merger of three different massive galaxy clusters. It lies some 3.5 billion light-years away, toward the constellation Sculptor. Dominated by dark matter, the mega-cluster warps and distorts the fabric of spacetime, gravitationally lensing even more distant objects. Redder than the Pandora cluster galaxies, many of the lensed sources are very distant galaxies in the early Universe, their lensed images stretched and distorted into arcs. Of course, distinctive diffraction spikes mark foreground Milky Way stars. At the Pandora Cluster's estimated distance, this cosmic box spans about 6 million light-years. But don't panic. You can explore the tantalizing region in a 2 minute video tour.

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TOPICS: Astronomy; Science
KEYWORDS: apod; nasa

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[AFB-XYZ]

Astounding images like that always bring the original Star Trek series to my mind. Would have loved to be aboard the Enterprise as they hurtled through the galaxies.

[NavyShoe]

How can that possibly be?

[No name given]

Wow.

[telescope115]

Mind-boggling distances. ”A long time ago, in galaxies far, far away…..”

[Diogenesis]

thank you, again!!!

https://www.sci.news/astronomy/science-hubble-ghost-light-stars-galaxies-abell2744-02246.html

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https://esawebb.org/images/weic2220c/