Pan across Abell 370

This video pans across the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370, the last cluster to be observed as part of the Frontier Fields programme. The huge mass of the cluster bends the light from more distant objects, creating distorted and magnified images of them. This allows astronomers to calculate the total mass of the cluster — both normal matter and dark matter — and to investigate objects in the early Universe that would be otherwise too faint and tiny for Hubble to see. Astronomers believe this distortion is caused by dark matter that holds together the mix of galaxies and intergalactic hot gas.