ACO 3341

This photo of the galaxy cluster ACO 3341 is from a collection of the first images obtained with VIMOS. ACO 3341 is located at a distance of almost 500 million light years (redshift z = 0.037), comparatively nearby in cosmological terms. It contains a large number of galaxies of different sizes and brightness that is bound together by gravity. The image is in the R-band and was obtained on March 4, 2002. Exposure 300 seconds, image quality 0.5 arcsec FWHM; field 7 x 7 arcmin²; North is up and East is left.