The Hubble mission support group has published a new colorful image of deep space. You can see several interesting objects on it.
The image shows a section of the sky in the constellation Pictor. In its upper right part, you can see a group of large elliptical galaxies. In the left part of the image, several stars are visible, which are part of our Milky Way. They stand out due to the diffraction rays surrounding them. This characteristic optical effect arises due to the design features of the mirror of refractor telescopes.
The Hubble photo was taken during a project aimed at finding massive galactic clusters that were missed in previous surveys. It is not surprising that astronomers gave it the comic name “They almost got away”. Observations are made at times when NASA specialists are re-targeting Hubble to other parts of the sky and the telescope is “idle”.
Knowing how galaxy clusters are distributed across the Universe, astronomers can get an idea of the distribution of the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of their mass. Its powerful gravity acts as a giant lens, distorting and amplifying light from more distant objects. This gives scientists the opportunity to look to the edge of the Universe and see bodies that otherwise would be too dim even for the most powerful terrestrial telescopes.
Recall that the search for dark matter is one of the main tasks of the NASA stratospheric telescope, which recently sent its first images.
According to https://esahubble.org
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