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A Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer has found the equivalent of the proverbial 900-pound gorilla in deep space. The "gorilla" is an extremely massive cluster of galaxies - the weight of several thousand of our Milky Ways - that existed when the universe was half its present age.

Paradoxically, the unexpected discovery of this ancient, heavyweight cluster is one of the strongest pieces of evidence yet that we live in a lightweight universe, one that doesn't have enough bulk to provide the gravity necessary to halt the expansion of space. Using X-ray satellites and ground-based telescopes to probe the remote regions of space, the Institute astronomer discovered MS1054-0321, a hefty galaxy cluster containing thousands of galaxies and many trillions of stars. The image on the left, taken by ground-based and X-ray observatories, shows the entire galaxy cluster surrounded by background and foreground galaxies. The image on the right, taken by Hubble's visible-light camera, provides a clearer view of the galaxies in the heart of the cluster.

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      Bethany Downer – Bethany.Downer@esawebb.org
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      This animation begins with a view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. We zoom through a scattering of foreground stars and enter the inky blackness of intergalactic space. We cross 2.5 million light-years to reach the Andromeda system, consisting of 36 dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting the giant spindle-shaped Andromeda galaxy at image center. An ambitious survey by the Hubble Space Telescope was made to plot the galaxy locations in three-dimensional space. In this video we circle around a model of the Andromeda system based on real Hubble observational data. NASA, ESA, Christian Nieves (STScI), Alessandro Savino (UC Berkeley); Acknowledgment: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Frank Summers (STScI), Robert Gendler The brightest companion galaxy to Andromeda is Messier 32 (M32). This is a compact ellipsoidal galaxy that might just be the remnant core of a larger galaxy that collided with Andromeda a few billion years ago. After being gravitationally stripped of gas and some stars, it continued along its orbit. Galaxy M32 contains older stars, but there is evidence it had a flurry of star formation a few billion years ago. In addition to M32, there seems to be a unique population of dwarf galaxies in Andromeda not seen in the Milky Way. They formed most of their stars very early on, but then they didn’t stop. They kept forming stars out of a reservoir of gas at a very low rate for a much longer time.
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      Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
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      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
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      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
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      University of California, Berkeley, California
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      Last Updated Feb 27, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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