Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Abell 2744: Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies

NASA ^ | June 29, 2011 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Why is this cluster of galaxies so jumbled? Far from a smooth distribution, Abell 2744 not only has knots of galaxies, but the X-ray emitting hot gas (colored red) in the cluster appears distributed differently than the dark matter. The dark matter, taking up over 75 percent of the cluster mass and colored blue in the above image, was inferred by that needed to create the distortion of background galaxies by gravitational lensing. The jumble appears to result from the slow motion collision of at least four smaller galaxy clusters over the past few billion years. The above picture combines optical images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope with X-ray images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Abell 2744, dubbed Pandora's cluster, spans over two million light years and can best be seen with a really large telescope toward the constellation of the Sculptor.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Merten (ITA, AOB), & D. Coe (STScI)]

[SunkenCiv]

join or quit list APoD 'blog post new APoD topic Astronomy Picture of the Day topic & keyword Astronomy Chat, Bloggers & keyword Science Chat, Bloggers & keyword NASA's APoD archive Calendar 1995-present APoD on your desktop

[Mr. Jazzy]

Psalm 19:1-6

Breath taking.

[TheOldLady]

A jumbled cluster of galaxies?  Two million light years in diameter?

And there it is on my screen, three inches wide.

Mind boggling.

[colorado tanker]

It's hard enough for me to try to get a perspective on the vastness of the Milky Way, but when they talk about clusters of galaxies, I'm just blown away.

[TheOldLady]

Exactly. Civ’s stuff can do that to ya!