Pandora's Cluster – NIRCam

2023-02-15 – The James Webb Space Telescope revealed never-before-seen details of Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). Made up of three clusters of galaxies, this megacluster creates a powerful gravitational lens, allowing faraway galaxies in the early universe to be observed.

Scientists used Webb’s NIRCam imager to produce this image, and it took about 30 hours of observing time. Astronomers estimate that roughly 50,000 sources of near-infrared light are represented in this image.

Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, ESA, NASA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI), I. Labbe (Swinburne University of Technology), R. Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh))