Imaging Dark Matter One Clump at a Time

Overlay of the infrared emission (black and white) with the radio emission (colour). The dark, low-mass object is located at the gap in the bright part of the arc on the right hand side (Credit : Keck/EVN/GBT/VLBA)

What if you could photograph something completely invisible? To our rather limited eyes that’s what astronomers seem to do all the time with infra red and radio astronomy to name a few. But, astronomers can do this in a rather intriguing way with something that does seem to be truly invisible! A team of astronomers have captured the latest “image” of a dark matter object a million times more massive than our Sun, not by seeing it, but by watching how it warps the light from galaxies billions of light years beyond it. Using an Earth sized telescope network they have revealed one of the smallest dark matter clumps ever found, offering a glimpse into the hidden structure of our universe.

Universe Today
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