Hubble Measures Galaxy Cluster's Mass with Extreme Precision

The Hubble Space Telescope recently mapped the mass within a galaxy cluster more precisely than ever before, according to new research.

The galaxy in question, MCS J0416.1-2403, is 160 trillion times the mass of the Sun.

Measuring the mass of such distant objects in the Universe is no easy task, but NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) used Hubble's Frontier Fields observing program to make it possible.

Usually to make such estimates, astronomers use gravitational effects large clusters of galaxies have on the light from very distant objects beyond them. When the cluster is large and dense enough and it aligns with the distant object just right, it can exhibit some dramatic effects.

The images of normal galaxies can be transformed into rings and sweeping arcs of light, even appearing several times within the same image - an effect referred to as strong lensing. This phenomenon is what allowed astronomers to map the mass distribution of MCS J0416.1-2403, using the new Hubble data.

"The depth of the data lets us see very faint objects and has allowed us to identify more strongly lensed galaxies than ever before," lead author Mathilde Jauzac of Durham University, UK, and Astrophysics & Cosmology Research Unit, South Africa, explained in a statement.

"Even though strong lensing magnifies the background galaxies they are still very far away and very faint. The depth of these data means that we can identify incredibly distant background galaxies. We now know of more than four times as many strongly lensed galaxies in the cluster than we did before."

Hubble has allowed researchers to thus far identify 51 new multiply imaged galaxies around the cluster, quadrupling the number found in previous surveys and bringing the grand total of lensed galaxies to 68.

The study's findings were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on July 24.