|
The stunning pictures of Saturn, the deep field, the Eagle, Crab, and Butterfly nebulae—in its 20 years of operation, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken what are now some of the most famous images in astronomy. But you've seen those over and over. As NASA prepares to mark the telescope's two-decade anniversary on April 24, we thought we'd bring you a selection of the Hubble's slightly less famous—but still gorgeous—contributions. These ravishing images come from the new book by Edward J. Weiler, Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time, published by Abrams Books in collaboration with NASA. may not be immediately obvious the first time you see this image, but notice the ring of slightly darker color around the center. That's a simulated map of the dark matter halo around galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17, superimposed on a Hubble picture. The ring may have been formed when two galactic clusters collided. Images like this are one of the ways researchers detect dark matter through its effects. In this case, Hubble observed how the gravity of this cluster distorted the light from more distant galaxies, and determined that the cluster's ordinary matter couldn't account for all of the distortion.
|
