Latest Galaxy clusters Stories
Astronomers using the South Pole Telescope report that they have discovered the most massive galaxy cluster yet seen at a distance of 7 billion light-years. The cluster (designated SPT-CL J0546-5345) weighs in at around 800 trillion Suns, and holds hundreds of galaxies."This galaxy cluster wins the heavyweight title. It's among the most massive clusters ever found at this distance," said Mark Brodwin, a Smithsonian astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics....
Astronomers have devised a new method for measuring perhaps the greatest puzzle of our universe "” dark energy. This mysterious force, discovered in 1998, is pushing our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds.For the first time, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope were able to take advantage of a giant magnifying lens in space "” a massive cluster of galaxies "” to narrow in on the nature of dark energy. Their calculations, when combined with data from other methods,...
Surveying the sky, XMM-Newton has discovered two massive galaxy clusters, confirming a previous detection obtained through observations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the 'shadow' they cast on the Cosmic Microwave Background. The discovery, made possible thanks to a novel mosaic observing mode recently introduced on ESA's X-ray observatory, opens a new window to study the Universe's largest bound structures in a multi-wavelength approach.Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally...
A new wide-field image released today by ESO displays many thousands of distant galaxies, and more particularly a large group belonging to the massive galaxy cluster known as Abell 315. As crowded as it may appear, this assembly of galaxies is only the proverbial "tip of the iceberg", as Abell 315 "” like most galaxy clusters "” is dominated by dark matter. The huge mass of this cluster deflects light from background galaxies, distorting their observed shapes slightly.When looking at the...
One of the teams behind ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray mission has unveiled the latest edition of their 2XMM catalogue. The newest incarnation boasts an additional 42,000 entries, ratcheting up the total to over a quarter of a million X-ray sources. This unprecedented cosmic X-ray library is a valuable resource allowing astronomers to explore the extreme Universe. This latest edition of the 2XMM catalogue, an unrivalled storehouse of information on X-ray sources, is the largest ever assembled. It is...
Two spectacular tails of X-ray emission have been seen trailing behind a galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. A composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3627 shows X-rays from Chandra in blue, optical emission in yellow and emission from hydrogen light -- known to astronomers as "H-alpha" -- in red. The optical and H-alpha data were obtained with the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile.At the front of the tail is the galaxy ESO 137-001. The brighter...
This composite image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745 (MACSJ0717, for short) where four separate galaxy clusters have been involved in a collision, the first time such a phenomenon has been documented. Hot gas is shown in an image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and galaxies are shown in an optical image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The hot gas is color-coded to show temperature, where the coolest gas is reddish purple, the hottest gas is blue, and the...
Abell 1689, shown in this composite image, is a massive cluster of galaxies located about 2.3 billion light years away that shows signs of merging activity. Hundred-million-degree gas detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown as purple in this image, while galaxies from optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are colored yellow. The X-ray emission has a smooth appearance, unlike other merging systems such as the Bullet Cluster or MACS J0025.4-1222. The temperature pattern...
A powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. This clash of clusters provides striking evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties.The observations of the cluster known as MACS J0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated the dark from ordinary matter and provide an independent confirmation of a similar effect detected previously in a target dubbed the Bullet Cluster. These new results...
ESA's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has discovered the most massive cluster of galaxies seen in the distant Universe until now. The galaxy cluster is so big that there can only be a handful of them at that distance, making this a rare catch indeed. The discovery confirms the existence of dark energy. The newly-discovered monster, known only by the catalogue number 2XMM J083026+524133, is estimated to contain as much mass as a thousand large galaxies. Much of it is in the form of...
Latest Galaxy clusters Reference Libraries
The Virgo Cluster consists of galaxies at a distance of around 59 Mly away in the constellation Virgo. Containing between 1300 to 2000 galaxies the Virgo Cluster is the heart of the Local Supercluster. Its mass is estimated at 1.2 × 1015 M☉ out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc. Most of the brighter galaxies in the cluster were discovered by Charles Messier in the late 1770's and early 1780's, including the giant elliptical Messier 87. Messier...
The IC 342/Maffei Group (also known as the IC 342 Group or the Maffei 1 Group) is the closest group of galaxies to the Local Group. The member galaxies are both concentrated around the two brightest galaxies of IC 342 and Maffei 1. The group can therefore be described as a binary group. Along with many others the group is located in the Virgo Supercluster.
The Centaurus A/M83, divided into subgroup Cen A and M83, is a complex group of galaxies located within Hydra, Centaurus, and Virgo constellations. The Cen A Subgroup, at a distance of 11.9 Mly (3.66 Mpc), is centered around Centaurus A, a nearby radio galaxy. The M83 Subgroup, at a distance of 14.9 Mly (4.56 Mpc), is centered around the Messier 83 (M83), a face-on spiral galaxy. Due to the physical closeness of both subgroups they are sometimes identified as two groups sometimes as one....
The Bullet Cluster is made up of two colliding clusters galaxies. According to a 2006 study, the Bullet Cluster also shows the best evidence for the existence of Dark Matter. From observations of galaxy cluster collisions it has been found that many show displacement between their center of visible matter and their gravitational potential. Each component, stars, gas, and dark matter, within a cluster pair behaves differently during a collision allowing for each to be studied separately....
Abell 2142, also called A2142 and located in the constellation Corona Borealis, is an X-ray luminous galaxy cluster. Its creation is due to the merger between two galaxy clusters. It is one of the largest objects in the universe and is six million light years across. It holds hundreds of galaxies and enough gas to make a thousand more. The pressure fronts in the system have been traced in detail and are relatively cool 50 million degree Celsius. The central region is embedded in large...
