Euclid’s image of galaxy cluster Abell 2390 reveals more than 50 000 galaxies and shows a beautiful display of gravitational lensing, depicting giant curved arcs on the sky – some of which are actually multiple views of the same distant object. Euclid’s cutout view of Abell 2390 shows the light permeating the cluster from stars that have been ripped away from their parent galaxies and sit in intergalactic space. Viewing this ‘intracluster light’ is a specialty of Euclid, and these stellar orphans may allow us to ‘see’ where dark matter lies.

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ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi

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euclid_s_new_image_of_galaxy_cluster_abell_2390.jpg (8,200 x 8,200 px)  –  2.9 MB

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University of Oslo copyright