NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a faint and ghostly glow of stars that were once emitted from galaxies billions of years ago. Since the glow is faint, NASA’s astronomers arrived at the conclusion that these galaxies were ripped apart gravitationally billions of years ago. They also concluded that six galaxies imploded inside a cluster of galaxies stretching over time frame of six billion years.
According to the scientists, the chaos occurred inside a vast collection of nearly 500 galaxies four billion light-years away. This large group of galaxies was nicknamed as ‘Pandora’s Cluster’.
Ignacio Trujillo from The Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias (IAC), Spain’s Santa Cruz de Tenerife, said, “The Hubble data revealing the ghost light are important steps forward in understanding the evolution of galaxy clusters. It is also amazingly beautiful in that we found the telltale glow by utilizing Hubble’s unique capabilities.”
The research group estimated that the combined light of about 200 billion outcast stars contributed to about 10% of the brightness of the cluster.
The measurements by Hubble also depicted that the phantom stars are rich in heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. This brings us to the conclusion that the scattered stars must be second or third generation ones because they are enriched with those elements that are formulated in the hearts of the first generation stars of the universe.
