(March 26, 2016) — On Friday, NASA released a strikingly beautiful photo of two colliding galaxy clusters.
According to NASA, the product of the combined clusters is known as MACS J0416. It’s located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Eridanus.
Three different telescopes were used to take the photo, including NASA’s Hubble Telescope.
Owing to its huge mass, the cluster is bending the light of background objects, acting as a magnifying lens. Astronomers say they can use this phenomenon to find galaxies that existed hundreds of million years after the big bang.
This beautiful cosmic kaleidoscope is two colliding galaxy clusters forming a single object: https://t.co/FuzAeEBVQE pic.twitter.com/oFutmWU2qn
— NASA (@NASA) March 25, 2016