This is a composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. The image represents three views of the region that astronomers have combined into one photograph. The optical view of the galaxy cluster, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006, shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. Diffuse, hot gas with a temperature of nearly 50 million degrees permeates the space between the galaxies. The gas emits X-rays, seen as blue in the image taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in November 2003. The X-ray portion of the image shows enormous holes or cavities in the gas, each roughly 640,000 light-years in diameter - nearly seven times the diameter of the Milky Way. The cavities are filled with charged particles gyrating around magnetic field lines and emitting radio waves shown in the red portion of image taken with the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico in October 2004. The cavities were created by jets of charged particles ejected at nearly light speed from a supermassive black hole weighing nearly a billion times the mass of our Sun lurking in the nucleus of the bright central galaxy. The jets displaced more than one trillion solar masses worth of gas. The power required to displace the gas exceeded the power output of the Sun by nearly ten trillion times in the past 100 million years.
Credits
Hubble and Chandra Image: NASA, ESA, CXC, STScI, and B. McNamara (University of Waterloo);Very Large Array Telescope Image: NRAO, and L. Birzan and team (Ohio University)
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | MS 0735.6+7421, Galaxy Cluster MS 0735 |
| Object Description | Galaxy Cluster |
| R.A. Position | 07h 41m 50.2s |
| Dec. Position | 74° 14' 51.0" |
| Constellation | Camelopardalis |
| Distance | About 2.6 billion light years |
| Dimensions | 4 arcminutes (3 million light-years or 900 kiloparsecs) wide |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | This image was created from HST data from the following proposal : B. McNamara (Ohio University), M. Wise (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and P. Nulsen (Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory). |
| Instrument | HST>ACS/WFC, CXO>ACIS, and VLA>"A" Configuration |
| Exposure Dates | February 1, 2006 (HST), November 30, 2003 (CXO), and October 24, 2004 (VLA) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by several different instruments from the three missions listed above. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue (CXO: X-ray Yellow-green (HST): visible Red (VLA): radio |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
