Description
Transcript: The most massive bound objects in the universe, clusters of galaxies, can also deflect light. Lensing by clusters produces the interesting phenomenon of multiple images of background galaxies along with distorted images of the galaxies where they form little arcs of light. Cluster lensing has now been observed in dozens of cases. It’s best seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. With its extraordinarily sharp images, the tiny little arcs are easily visible. Typically a relatively nearby cluster of galaxies at a redshift of a few tenths, 0.2 to maybe 0.5, and consisting mostly of massive red elliptical galaxies will cause distortion and multiple images of background distant galaxies that are often blue and are at a redshift of one or two. Many pairs of images or many arcs are seen in lensing clusters, and these little images can be used to reconstruct the mass distribution of the cluster. This analysis confirms that clusters of galaxies are overwhelmingly composed of dark matter.
Transcript: The fact that quasars are at large distances and have huge luminosities depends on the cosmological interpretation of their redshift. There are some crucial distinctions between galaxies and quasars as far as redshift goes. For galaxies they follow a Hubble relation where distance...
Published 07/28/11
Transcript: Quasars were mysterious when they were first discovered in the 1960s. But careful work showed that the quasar is surrounded by nebulosity, and eventually spectroscopy of the nebulosity showed that it was the light of stars in a normal galaxy. Thus quasar stands for quasi-stellar...
Published 07/28/11
Transcript: Astronomers at Caltech became interested in the newly accurate radio positions of strong sources in the sky. They focused in particular on two sources, 3C48 and 3C273 which appeared to be associated with bluish stars. Since normal stars like the Sun do not emit strong radio waves...
Published 07/28/11