NASA telescopes team up to capture "Christmas tree" view of universe

NASA telescopes team up to capture “Christmas tree” view of universe

November 13, 2023 Benjamin Hughes

A dazzling new image produced using both the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed one of the most detailed views of the universe to date, NASA has announced.

Created by combining infrared data taken by Webb and visible light observations collected by Hubble, the resulting picture shows a distant pair of colliding galaxy clusters through a range of light wavelengths so vast it seems to sparkle with color.

The galaxy clusters, which scientists expect will combine at point to form an even larger cluster, is located about 4.3 billion light years from Earth, according to NASA. Although technically called MACS0416, experts involved in the massive study have colloquially named the bundle of celestial objects the “Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster” because of its distinctively polychromatic appearance.

This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Jose M. Diego (IFCA), Jordan C. J. D’Silva (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Jake Summers (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Haojing Yan (University of Missouri)

“We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. We can see transients everywhere,” Haojing Yan, an astronomer and professor at the University of Missouri, who was the lead author of one paper reviewing the results of the joint galactic study by Webb and Hubble, said in a statement.

Source: cbsnews.com