Posts published in “Dark Skies”

In spite of all the roiling news from the cosmos and the dark skies this week—the Milky Way’s central black hole is swallowing a massive dust cloud before astronomer’s observant eyes; the visible conjunction of Venus and Jupiter early this morning—let’s return to a notation made in last week’s Celestial Exploring column. We had mentioned in passing that the Webb Space Telescope (WST) had sent images of its infra-red camera probe into Abell 2744, “Pandora’s Cluster,” where three immense, merging galaxies provide a magnifying glass, known as “gravitational lensing”, for the objects veiled behind them. Over 50,000 previously dim objects have now been seen anew, and among them are previously unknown galaxies. That’s a pretty big deal for those who chart the history and makeup…