哈勃望远镜瞥见一对星系二人组

Two enormous galaxies capture your attention in this spectacular image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The galaxy on the left is a lenticular galaxy, named 2MASX J03193743+4137580. The side-on spiral galaxy on the right is more simply named UGC 2665. Both galaxies lie approximately 350 million light-years from Earth, and they both form part of the huge Perseus galaxy cluster.

Perseus is an important figure in Greek mythology, renowned for slaying Medusa the Gorgon – who is herself famous for the unhappy reason that she was cursed to have living snakes for hair. Given Perseus’s impressive credentials, it seems appropriate that the galaxy cluster is one of the biggest objects in the known universe, consisting of thousands of galaxies, only a few of which are visible in this image. The wonderful detail in the image is thanks to the WFC3’s powerful resolution and sensitivity to both visible and near-infrared light, the wavelengths captured in this image.

Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Harris; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

NASA/ESA哈勃太空望远镜使用广角相机3 (WFC3)拍摄了这张壮观的照片，两个巨大的星系吸引了你的注意。左边的星系是一个透镜星系，命名为2MASX J03193743+4137580。右边侧面的螺旋星系被更简单地命名为UGC 2665。这两个星系距离地球大约3.5亿光年，它们都是巨大的英仙座星系团的一部分。

珀尔修斯是希腊神话中的重要人物，因杀死了蛇发女怪美杜莎而闻名。而美杜莎自己也因被诅咒以活蛇为头发而闻名。考虑到英仙座令人印象深刻的可信度，这个星系团似乎是已知宇宙中最大的天体之一，由数千个星系组成，在这张图片中只有少数可见。这幅图像中的细节多亏了WFC3强大的分辨率和对可见光和近红外光的灵敏度，也就是这张图像中所捕捉到的波长。

文字来源：欧洲航天局
图片来源：ESA/Hubble & NASA，W. Harris；鸣谢：L. Shatz