APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Explanation: Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast , why galaxies orbit clusters so fast , why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and how visible matter is distributed. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History 's Hayden Planetarium Space Show, Dark Universe, highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation , complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs , while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryon ic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations.…