Caught in the Cosmic Web – Dark Matter Structure Revealed

NASA/ESA Hubblecast 58

This video reports on a very impressive research effort resulting in the first 3-D mapping of dark matter for a galaxy cluster. A massive galaxy cluster over 5 billion light-years from Earth is the first to have such a full 3-dimensional map of its dark matter distribution. The dark matter is the dominant component of the cluster’s mass. The cluster, known as MACS J0717, is still in the formation stage. The Hubble Space Telescope and a number of ground-based telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii were used to determine the spatial distribution. The longest filament of dark matter discovered by the international team of astronomers stretches across 60 million light-years. Gravitational lensing of galaxy images (as Einstein predicted) and redshift measurements for a large number of galaxies were required in order to uncover the 3-D shape and characteristics of the filament.