gravitational lensing tagged posts

Highest-resolution Map of Dark Matter revealed: detailed case for existence of Cold dark matter

This is a 3-D visualization of reconstructed dark matter clump distributions in a distant galaxy cluster, obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields data. The unseen matter in this map is comprised of a smooth heap of dark matter on which clumps form. Credit: Yale University

This is a 3-D visualization of reconstructed dark matter clump distributions in a distant galaxy cluster, obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields data. The unseen matter in this map is comprised of a smooth heap of dark matter on which clumps form. Credit: Yale University

The dark matter map is derived from Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields data of a trio of galaxy clusters that act as cosmic magnifying glasses to peer into older, more distant parts of the universe, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Yale astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan led an international team of researchers that analyzed the Hubble images...

Read More

One of the Brightest Distant Galaxies known Discovered

Discovered one of the brightest distant galaxies so far known

The gravitational lensed system BG1429+1202. This picture shows how strong gravitational lensing by a massive galaxy (red color) acts on the light of a very distant galaxy (with bluish color), producing in this case four separate images and increasing the total flux. Without this effect, the detailed study of distant galaxies like BG1429+1202 requires the next generation of extremely large telescopes, like TMT and E-ELT. Credit: Gabriel Pérez (IAC), GTC, Isaac Newton Group, andthe DECaLS project.

An international team has discovered one of the brightest “non-active” galaxies in the early universe...

Read More

Large No. of Dwarf Galaxies discovered in Early Universe

Massive cluster of galaxies Abell 1689 creates a strong gravitational effect on background and older galaxies, seen as arcs of light. Astronomers found the large population of distant dwarf galaxies from when the universe was between two to six billion years old. This cosmic time is critical as it is the most productive time for star formation in the universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Siana, and A. Alavi

Massive cluster of galaxies Abell 1689 creates a strong gravitational effect on background and older galaxies, seen as arcs of light. Astronomers found the large population of distant dwarf galaxies from when the universe was between two to six billion years old. This cosmic time is critical as it is the most productive time for star formation in the universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Siana, and A. Alavi

Using the gravitational lensing, astronomers have discovered a large number of dwarf galaxies in the early universe. This could reveal important details about a productive period of star formation in the universe billions of years ago. The findings build on a growing body of knowledge about dwarf galaxies, the smallest and dimmest galaxies in the universe.

It is believed that dwarf galaxies p...

Read More

Astronomers report most ‘Outrageously’ Luminous Galaxies ever observed

The 50-meter diameter Large Millimeter Telescope is the largest, most sensitive single-aperture instrument in the world for studying star formation. Operated jointly by UMass Amherst and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, it was recently used to observe the most luminous galaxies ever seen. Credit: UMass Amherst/Smith College/James Lowenthal

The 50-meter diameter Large Millimeter Telescope is the largest, most sensitive single-aperture instrument in the world for studying star formation. Operated jointly by UMass Amherst and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, it was recently used to observe the most luminous galaxies ever seen. Credit: UMass Amherst/Smith College/James Lowenthal

The newly observed galaxies are about 10 billion years old and were formed only about 4 billion years after the Big Bang. In categorizing luminous sources, astronomers call an infrared galaxy “ultra-luminous” when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the “hyper-luminous” level...

Read More