NASA's Hubble Space Telescope picked-up the faint glow of stars from ancient galaxies that were torn to pieces by gravity billions of years ago.

The destruction of the stars occurred inside a vast collection of almost 500 galaxies dubbed "Abell 2744" and nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster." The cluster is 4 billion light years away from Earth.

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The solitary stars are no longer part of any galaxy and wander freely between the cluster's galaxies. Hubble astronomers put together forensic evidence by monitoring light from the orphaned stars that suggest as many as six galaxies were ripped apart inside the cluster over 6 billion years ago.

Computer modeling suggests galaxies as large as the Milky Way, to which the Earth belongs, are the most likely candidates as the origin of the drifting stars. The long-gone galaxies would have been ripped apart if they went through the core of a cluster of galaxies where gravitational tidal forces are at their most powerful.

Scientists have long hypothesized that light from dispersed celestial bodies should be noticeable after such galaxies are dismembered. The anticipated "intracluster" glow of stars, however, is very faint, which made it challenging to identify.

"The Hubble data revealing the ghost light are important steps forward in understanding the evolution of galaxy clusters," said Ignacio Trujillo of The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.

"It is also amazingly beautiful in that we found the telltale glow by utilizing Hubble's unique capabilities."

Astronomers estimate the combined light of scattered stars that number some 200 billion contributes about 10 percent of the brightness of the cluster.

"The results are in good agreement with what has been predicted to happen inside massive galaxy clusters," said Mireia Montes of the IAC, lead author of the paper.

TagsPandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Hubble Space Telescope, Galaxy, Gravity, Gravitational forces, Stars, Starlight, Light