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                           Astronomy Picture of the Day   
      
       Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our   
         fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation   
                       written by a professional astronomer.   
      
                                    2022 May 11   
      
                                  Gravity's Grin   
          Image Credit: X-ray - NASA / CXC / J. Irwin et al. ; Optical -   
                                    NASA/STScI   
      
      Explanation: Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published   
      over 100 years ago, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing.   
      And that's what gives these distant galaxies such a whimsical   
      appearance, seen through the looking glass of X-ray and optical image   
      data from the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes. Nicknamed the   
      Cheshire Cat galaxy group, the group's two large elliptical galaxies   
      are suggestively framed by arcs. The arcs are optical images of distant   
      background galaxies lensed by the foreground group's total distribution   
      of gravitational mass. Of course, that gravitational mass is dominated   
      by dark matter. The two large elliptical "eye" galaxies represent the   
      brightest members of their own galaxy groups which are merging. Their   
      relative collisional speed of nearly 1,350 kilometers/second heats gas   
      to millions of degrees producing the X-ray glow shown in purple hues.   
      Curiouser about galaxy group mergers? The Cheshire Cat group grins in   
      the constellation Ursa Major, some 4.6 billion light-years away.   
      
                        Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space   
        __________________________________________________________________   
      
          Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)   
               NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.   
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                         A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC   
                                & Michigan Tech. U.   
      
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