Intracluster Light in the Abell 85 Galaxy Cluster: Enhanced image | Subaru Telescope

Abell 85 Galaxy Cluster Intracluster Light: Enhanced Image | Subaru Telescope

Image of the Abell 85 galaxy cluster, taken by the Hyper Suprime-Cam mounted on the Subaru Telescope in Hawai‘i. The enhanced teal hazy overlay is intracluster light—the collective glow of innumerable stars stripped from their home galaxies and left to wander vast intergalactic space. This ghostly glow is incredibly faint and difficult to detect, and is too faint to be seen in this image without the teal overlay, but Rubin Observatory’s 10-year survey will provide scientists with the data they need to detect intracluster light in thousands of galaxy clusters, unlocking clues to the evolutionary history of the Universe on large scales.

Image Description: A smattering of hundreds of galaxies of different shapes and sizes against a black background, semi-opaque teal blobs surround and connect many of the galaxies, tracing the distribution of the countless wandering stars that make up the intracluster light. The ghostly teal glow is primarily concentrated in an irregular shape around the galaxies in the center of the image, but larger individual galaxies off to the sides have their own separate glows.

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Credit: Astronomical Data/Image: M. Montes (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias); Artistic Enhancement: J. Pinto (Rubin Observatory).

Release Date: Dec. 4, 2023

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