The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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Thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423.
The largest bright white oval is a supergiant elliptical galaxy that is the dominant member of this galaxy cluster. The galaxy cluster acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting the light from objects that lie well behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing that has big research benefits. Astronomers can study lensed galaxies in detail, like the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.
This 2023 image is from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera). Researchers used Webb to survey the same field that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope imaged in 2010. Thanks to its specialisation in high-resolution near-infrared imagery, Webb was able to show researchers many more galaxies in far more detail.
[Image description: Thousands of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this field, including galaxies in a massive galaxy cluster, and distorted background galaxies behind the galaxy cluster. The background of space is black.]