Coma Cluster

The Coma Cluster, an aggregate thousands of galaxies. The picture is a mosaic of 12 partially overlapping pointings obtained with the EPIC-pn camera. The cluster was chosen during XMM-Newton's performance verification phase to prove the observatory's ability to map and analyse data from large extended X-ray sources. Bottom, a close-up view of the temperature structure in the inner region of the Coma Cluster of galaxies, highlighting the X-ray hardness and corresponding temperatures around the giant elliptical galaxies NGC 4889 and NGC 4874 and the gas in the central part of the cluster. Courtesy U. Briel, Max-Planck Institut f|r extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany.