Galaxy Cluster Abell 1413

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the rich galaxy cluster Abell 1413, over 2 billion light-years from Earth. Abell 1413 is part of the Abell catalogue, a collection of over 4,000 rich clusters of galaxies fairly close to Earth — at least from a cosmological perspective. Their light took less than 3 billion years to reach us. Abell 1413 is observed to contain more than 300 galaxies held together by the immense gravity of the cluster. Visible distortions in the image appear as arcs, caused by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when the intense gravity of the cluster bends space-time around it, causing a range of bizarre and beautiful optical phenomena for galaxies located in the background. This image is dominated by a large and highly elliptical galaxy called MCG+04-28-097, with a halo of stars extending for more than 6.5 million light-years.