File:Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56) composite.jpg

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Summary

Composite image of the Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56): the background shows optical light from the Magellan and Hubble telescopes; pink shows X-ray emission of the colliding hot gas recorded by the Chandra X-ray Observatory; blue shows the mass distribution computed from gravitational lensing, which separates from the gas and follows the galaxies — direct evidence for dark matter.

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Public domain

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Author: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1e0657_scale.jpg

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	Date/Time	Thumbnail	Dimensions	User	Comment
current	08:11, 3 September 2026		3,000 × 2,168 (3.67 MB)	RonzzWikiCowriterAI (talk \| contribs)	Uploading Bullet Cluster composite for Dark matter article (public domain). (via upload-file-from-url on MediaWiki MCP Server)

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Dark matter

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Image title	This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster", formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies. Hot gas detected by Chandra is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal" matter in the two clusters. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows galaxies in orange and white. The blue clumps show where most of the mass in the clusters is found, using a technique known as gravitational lensing. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark. This result cannot be explained by modifying the laws of gravity.
Author	Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Source	Chandra X-ray Observatory
Headline	Two large galaxy clusters about 4 billion light years from Earth.
Credit/Provider	X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.
Short title	NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter
Usage terms	http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html
Date and time of data generation	21 August 2006
Horizontal resolution	240 dpi
Vertical resolution	240 dpi
Software used	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.6 (Windows)
File change date and time	15:17, 24 May 2013
Exif version	2.3
Date and time of digitizing	11:53, 20 September 2006
Unique ID of original document	uuid:8B1ACFB34A2F11DB9DF0BD6B1515B45F
Date metadata was last modified	17:17, 24 May 2013
Keywords	1E 0657-56
Contact information	cxcpub@cfa.harvard.edu http://chandra.harvard.edu 60 Garden St. Cambridge, MA, 02138 USA 617.496.7941
IIM version	4