Balloon-borne telescope captures space images, revealing secrets of dark matter.

The Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT), a balloon-based telescope, has captured its first images of the cosmos from the edge of space, including the Tarantula Nebula and the Antennae galaxies. SuperBIT aims to capture images of galaxies in the visible-to-near ultraviolet light spectrum and investigate dark matter using gravitational lensing. The telescope can circumnavigate the globe at an altitude of around 21 miles above over 99.5% of Earth’s atmosphere for 100 days, providing a clearer view of light that has traveled billions of years from galaxies in the distant and early universe.