The nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies, nearly 1,000 times fainter than the dark night sky is for the first time captured in its deepest wide-field image. It directly reveals a vast, complex web of ”intracluster starlight” filling the space between the galaxies within the cluster. This extremely faint starlight is made of streamers, plumes and cocoons, which are made up of stars torn out of galaxies as they bang with each other within the cluster, and act as a sort of ”archaeological record” of the violent lives of cluster galaxies.
The researchers at the Case Western Reserve University clicked more than 70 images of the Virgo Cluster during a course of 14 dark moonless nights. Then they used advanced image processing techniques to combine the individual images into a single image capable of showing the faint intracluster light. Congratulations! It’s a marvelous achievement.
Via: Rednova
