Abell S0740 by Hubble

Author: Tom* Comments(10)

The main Hubble camera may be on the fritz, thankfully there are many images that have yet to be released. This image, just released, was taken in January 2005. Click on it to get a larger version, and look close, it’s great. There are examples of globular clusters, a gravitational lens, and all sorts of different galaxy types; I like the M-104 looking galaxies.

If you click here, you will get a version with some of the details.

The Hubble release:

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies in the cluster Abell S0740 that is over 450 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Centaurus.

The giant elliptical ESO 325-G004 looms large at the cluster’s center. The galaxy is as massive as 100 billion of our suns. Hubble resolves thousands of globular star clusters orbiting ESO 325-G004. Globular clusters are compact groups of hundreds of thousands of stars that are gravitationally bound together. At the galaxy’s distance they appear as pinpoints of light contained within the diffuse halo.

Other fuzzy elliptical galaxies dot the image. Some have evidence of a disk or ring structure that gives them a bow-tie shape. Several spiral galaxies are also present. The starlight in these galaxies is mainly contained in a disk and follows along spiral arms.

This image was created by combining Hubble science observations taken in January 2005 with Hubble Heritage observations taken a year later to form a 3-color composite. The filters that isolate blue, red and infrared light were used with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Acknowledgment: J. Blakeslee (Washington State University)

10 Comments so far

  1. John on February 7th, 2007

    Absolutely Awesome and very interesting! coming from a novice researcher.

  2. Carrie on February 8th, 2007

    Wow…I wish I could use that image for wallpaper or a screensaver!

  3. Ed Cohen on February 8th, 2007

    Fantastic photo.

  4. Tom on February 8th, 2007

    Let me see if I can get this to a desktop size, probably sometime this weekend.

  5. Carrie on February 8th, 2007

    >PERK

  6. ron on February 8th, 2007

    where no man has gone befor

  7. Richard on February 8th, 2007

    When you think you’ve seen everything…

  8. Lainie on February 16th, 2007

    Wow! A beautiful image. Please see my astronomy website:

    Lainies Astronomy Webpage for Beginners…

    ~Lainie~The StarGazer

    My Astronomy website:
    http://community.webtv.net/LAINIE121/DOC

    [edit: this link does not work -- Tom]

  9. Lainie on February 19th, 2007

    Here’s my URL again.

    http://community.webtv.net/LAINIE121/doc

  10. Tom on February 19th, 2007

    AAAAAAHHHH, it took me a minute but I see the difference in the URL’s. The second one works.

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