Featured Image: BUFFALO Hunting with Hubble

Be sure to click on the above image and enlarge it for the full view of the stunning, rich galaxy cluster Abell 370 (top right) and its surrounding area. This image was captured as part of the Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields and Legacy Observations (BUFFALO) program, which is using 101 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope time to revisit the six Hubble Frontier Fields galaxy clusters and their flanking regions. Expanding on the Frontier Fields study, each set of BUFFALO images covers a region that’s four times larger than the previous coverage — the red-shaded section above shows the area that was previously imaged through Frontier Fields. BUFFALO’s wide, deep look will take advantage of gravitational lensing from these massive galaxy clusters to do two things: discover distant, high-redshift galaxies that lie behind the clusters, and study dark matter and galaxy assembly using the foreground clusters. For more information, check out the below article led by Charles L. Steinhardt (Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) and University of Copenhagen) that describes the study.

Citation

“The BUFFALO HST Survey,” Charles L. Steinhardt et al 2020 ApJS 247 64. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/ab75ed