NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this peculiar image of galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154, which resembles a cosmic question mark of sorts. How so? The cluster acts like a magnifying because it’s so massive that it warps the fabric of space-time.
This lensing allows astronomers to see enhanced detail in much more distant galaxies behind the cluster. However, the same gravitational effects that magnify the galaxies also cause distortion, resulting in galaxies that appear smeared across the sky in arcs and in this case, a question mark. One thing to note is that the question mark’s dot is actually an unrelated galaxy that happens to be in the right place and space-time, from our perspective at least.
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Knowing when, where, and how star formation occurs within galaxies is crucial to understanding how galaxies have evolved over the history of the universe. Both galaxies in the Question Mark Pair show active star formation in several compact regions, likely a result of gas from the two galaxies colliding. However, neither galaxy’s shape appears too disrupted, so we are probably seeing the beginning of their interaction with each other,” said Vicente Estrada-Carpenter, astronomer at Saint Mary’s University.
