Galaxies are not just the glowing stars and gas you see through a telescope. They are swaddled in a huge ball, or “halo,” of hydrogen that stretches vast distances into the empty space between them. These halos are usually challenging to see and study, but it’s just gotten a little easier, thanks to a combination of nature’s own magnifying technique and the excellent vision of the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
Two new images showing these glowing halos of gas have been released as part of a study presented June 25 during the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society by Adélaïde Claeyssens of the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon. These images, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, show gravitationally lensed galaxies and their, in this case, easy-to-spot halos. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive object, such as a galaxy cluster, ...
