Abell 2744 Epoch1+Epoch2 (2014)

I forgot how little of the cluster is actually covered by the WFC3 observations. I guess it’s not so bad to have to crop off a lot of the ACS data (see here) because the lensed images are so distorted and skinny that it’s hard to see them without looking very close.

Anyway, yeah, I think I am in love with the Frontier Fields project. There are three more fields going under the lens over the next year and a half with MACSJ0416.1-2403 coming up at the end of September. Oooh, that’s actually pretty soon! (A total of 6 clusters will hopefully be done by 2016)

I used the same technique for the noise this time as I did for the ACS data, which is to get rid of the color noise by placing a black layer on “color” mode over it with all of the bright points and galaxies masked off so that their colors are maintained.

Red: hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3-30mas_abell2744_f160w_v1.0_drz + hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3-30mas_abell2744_f140w_v1.0_drz + hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3-30mas_abell2744_f125w_v1.0_drz
Green: hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3-30mas_abell2744_f105w_v1.0_drz + hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas-selfcal_abell2744_f814w_v1.0-epoch2_drz
Blue: hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas-selfcal_abell2744_f606w_v1.0-epoch2_drz + hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas-selfcal_abell2744_f435w_v1.0-epoch2_drz

North is NOT up. It is 8.5° clockwise from up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.