Pandora’s Cluster (combined Hubble and VLT view)

This image of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 combines data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, with an image taken with the ESO VLT. Hubble provides the central, most detailed part of the image, while the VLT offers a wider field of view.

This object has been nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster because of the many different and strange phenomena that were unleashed by a huge collision that occurred over a period of 350 million years. A simultaneous pile-up between at least four separate clusters has produced strange effects that have never been seen together before.