Aug 16, 2017
Abell 370
Abell 370 is a galaxy cluster located about 4 billion light years away towards the constellation Cetus, the Sea Monster. The cluster contains several hundred galaxies, a mixture of bright, yellow elliptical galaxies and bluish spirals. While elliptical galaxies are brighter and more massive, spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are younger.
This image shows an example of gravitational lensing, a phenomenon where gravity from massive objects like galaxy clusters bends light from sources behind it. Nearly 100 galaxies have multiple distorted images from this effect in this view, including a feature called “the Dragon” that is likely several duplications of a single galaxy along an arc.
Image and information from HubbleSite.
