DECam

The faint glow of individual stars lingering between two bright galaxies indicates that the galaxies are in an active merger—and that the galaxy clusters around them are also merging. The image was assembled from the entire 28 hours of observations by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), built for the U.S. Department of Energy and mounted on the National Science Foundation (NSF) 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Toluolo Inter-American Observatory. Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Ghostly bridge of stolen stars reveals galactic 'tug of war'

  • One response
A million-light-year-long intracluster light bridge in the Abell 3667 cluster provides the first optical evidence of an aggressive merger between the cluster's two brightest galaxies—hinting at an ancient merger of two clusters
Science website logo
SEARCH