The dragon is a magical animal in ancient Chinese mythology, which can soar through the clouds and ride the fog, soar for nine days, and soar around the world, which is a symbol of strength and sacredness.
For thousands of years, people have tried to find this legendary artifact, but to no avail.
However, NASA's Hubble telescope, while observing the dark deep space of cetus in 2018, suddenly found a mysterious golden "dragon" with flashing scales and flying in the Abel 370 galaxy cluster 4 billion light-years away.
This is Hubble's Ultra-Deep Space Boundary Field and Debris Observation (BUFFALO) program, and while observing the Abel 370 galaxy cluster, scientists found strange twisting features at the edges of gravitational lensing, thus calling it The Dragon.
The Abel 370 cluster gathers hundreds of galaxies, each with tens to hundreds of billions of stars, and a larger share of dark matter, creating a huge gravitational field.
When the light behind the galaxy cluster passes through this gravitational field, because the gravitational force is so strong that the path of light is bent, creating this amplification effect called gravitational lensing, allowing us to see objects that we normally cannot see.
The dragon observed this time is not a real dragon, but an image of the galaxy distorted.
Scientists believe it is actually 5 images of the same spiral galaxy, enlarged and stretched by the Abel 370 galaxy cluster to form this arc-like image like a dragon;
But some scientists have previously believed that the dragon may be composed of several galaxies, with a spiral galaxy at the head, another spiral galaxy forming a tail, and several other galaxies overlapping in the middle, which are about 5 billion light-years away.
(This high resolution downloadable as screen wallpaper)
BUFFALO plans to use Hubble's 160-hour observation time for long-term observations and analysis, and the Abel 370 galaxy cluster is its first image.
By measuring the arc of the dragon, scientists can trace the entire gravitational lens, determine the degree of distortion and radiation between these galaxies and dust, calculate the missing mass , dark matter , and thus understand the structure of the universe and understand the problems of the deepest part of the universe.
Stay tuned: