The image, captured by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the faint glow of the galaxies which were once full of life and activity.
The dead stars are now no longer bound to any one galaxy and drift freely within an immense collection of nearly 500 other galaxies named 'Pandora's Cluster'.
Hubble astronomers have found by observing the light from these stars that as many as six galaxies in the cluster were destroyed over a stretch of 6 billion years.
The ghosts of the galaxies can be identified by the strange faint blue glow
'The Hubble data revealing the ghost light are important steps forward in understanding the evolution of galaxy clusters,' said Ignacio Trujillo of The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
'It is also amazingly beautiful in that we found the telltale glow by utilizing Hubble's unique capabilities.'
The team at NASA has estimated that the combined light of about 200 billion outcast stars contributes approximately 10 percent of the cluster's brightness.
Galaxy clusters are so massive that their gravity deflects light passing through them, magnifying, brightening, and distorting light in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
The NASA team have used the Hubble data to probe the environment of the foreground cluster itself and are hoping to find more ghost stars in five other clusters close by.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.
Posted by Unknown on Friday, October 31, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
0 comments "Ghosts of dead galaxies: Incredible NASA image shows spooky glow of dead ..."
Post a Comment